This is obvious to some but, surprisingly, not to most people I know.  Apple’s future is most assuredly not as a computer company. Oh, Apple may continue to manufacture personal computers for many more years. And it will likely make a tidy profit doing so. But personal computers will not determine Apple’s fate.

The reality is that Apple’s success or failure will be determined almost solely by its ability to become a blockbuster consumer electronics company. It will rise or fall on the basis of whether it can create compelling consumer electronics, primarily media and communication devices, driven by elegant and easy-to-use software, in a way that makes Apple products the focus of desire to consumers. It may succeed. Or it may fail.  But there is little doubt that this is the direction that Steve Jobs has irrevocably pointed the company.  Apple’s decision three years ago to change the corporate name from “Apple Computer, Inc.” to “Apple, Inc.” was not a meaningless act without serious import. It was a public declaration of a “bet-the-company” gamble on Apple’s future success. And it happened on the day the original iPhone was launched.

So far, Apple has redefined and dominates (while not creating) the music consumption space with the iPod, which is rapidly being displaced by other Apple devices, and not by competitors’ products. It has revolutionized the mobile phone space (without, of course, inventing the mobile phone) and even its most successful competitors in this space mimic the core of the changes made three years ago by the first iPhone. Apple is now in the midst of fundamentally redefining the space occupied by “netbooks.” The iPad is a direct (and so far successful) challenger to such devices. So-called tablet “computers” have been offered for ten years or more, but have failed to generate meaningful business. Check out this tablet “device” from 2003. In 2003 tablet “computers” were projected to sell only 425,000 world-wide in one year, which is one quarter of the number of iPads Apple sold in 30 days in only the United States.

The key is that the iPad is elegant (and fetishistic, in a good way), virtually demanding to be touched, but it is most definitely not a personal computer. It performs some functions of a computer, but to consumers the iPad is a beautiful device that grants wishes and requires no computer knowledge to operate. It is, in the words of Apple PR, a “magical” and “revolutionary” device.

Characterize these claims as hyperbole if you wish.  But “magical” and “revolutionary” are the characteristics that will make or break Apple going forward. I submit that the iPad is, to almost all its buyers, at least revolutionary and quite possibly magical. I have seen many iPad purchasers who otherwise have no interest in computers yet almost immediately fall in love with their iPads.

In terms of Apple’s future, so far so good….

Disclosure: I own Apple stock. Nothing on this blog should be construed as investment advice.