Tablets Poised for Huge Adoption, According to Media Research

The best clue to understanding how tablets will be adopted comes from looking at smart-phone usage today, Trippe said.

"The iPhone users, they do an awful lot, and they are doing much more interactive and much more content-oriented tasks [like] looking up reference information, [and] reading documentation and educational material on their devices," he said. Significantly, iPhone users differ from other smart-phone users in their rate of consumption of games, news and media, sports, articles and books. "The iPhone user outpaces the average smart-phone user in these content-centric activities by really a remarkable amount," he said, "and I think that's very promising for magazine and news publishers ... [if] we can project this somewhat out to the iPad."

If e-readers promise simple consumption, tablets promise a high level of engagement. This should drive a rapid and high iPad adoption rate, Trippe said.

Trippe tempered his remarks by citing the opinion of Howard Ratner, chief technology officer at the Nature Publishing Group, who has called it a "fool's errand" to imagine how everyone will want to access content on mobile devices—therefore, don't put all content in one format, and be as flexible as you possibly can. Trippe said he agrees with those in the industry who believe XML is "the path to that flexibility."

"Make it scaleable," he said of a multiplatform workflow, by integrating in high levels of automation. "As each new device comes in, you want to be able to publish to all those devices in as automated a way as possible, having [the] least impact to existing staff and process and quality."

Make vendors your partners, he added. "If you don't have bandwidth," he noted, "find a partner for that."