So will the new Apple iPad cut the mustard? Will it straddle the gap between a smartphone and laptop? Or to be more precise, will it save the flagging publishing industry?

To great fanfare and usual Apple appetite whetting the iPad has just  been unveiled to an excited public.

It looks sleek and ‘sexy’, something you’d expect from the cool guys at Apple. It’s a tablet shaped computer which looks, say many, like an over-sized iPhone, and boasts a 9.7 inch colour screen.

But for most observers, it’s not about looks, but about where it fits into the overall scheme of techno-gadgets. And in launching the iPad, Apple’s CEO Jobs described where it was targeted, the currently sleepy ebook market. In the same way that Apple took a stranglehold on the music market and helped change the way people listened to music for ever, so they now want to take control of the ebook market.

There’s plenty there already, with Sony’s ereader having been out some time and Amazon putting a lot of weight behind their Kindle ereader.

But Apple has proved that smart design, coupled with smart marketing, can give them the edge as they build the device then stimulate growth and sales.

Of course, the iPad can do many other things as well, including surf the web, send emails, play games, watch TV, make notes and generally organise their owner’s lives.

But Apple have their eye on the ebook market and have created iBooks which lets the user purchase and download ebooks onto the iPad.

And to reinforce their commitment in this sector, they already signed deals with the likes of Penguin, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.

What’s more, it’s not only book publishers who are hoping for big things from the iPad. All content creators, the newspaper and magazine groups especially, will be praying that this is the device that not only makes reading content interesting, but also gives it a value. The big hope is that devices such as the iPad and Kindle will change the way people read books and newspapers. And thus bring about the end of the ‘free content’ age, when everything could be expected to be on the internet for nothing.

So if you want to read your Charles Dickens, or Financial Times on the iPad, then American citizens will be able to get their hands on a model by March for around $499, whereas those in the UK will have to wait a little longer and prices have yet to be set.

In case you’re interested, the iPad weighs only 700 grams and is a mere 0.5 inch thick; which is useful, given it has to spend a lot of time cupped in your hands. And it can store between 16 and 64 gigabytes of data.

Form an orderly queue now!