Imagine the December issue of Vogue comes out one week early exclusively on Apple’s iPad and the first few pages feature Kate Moss modelling a new Burberry handbag. This was one of the scenarios put forward by Richard Kramer, director of Arete Research, at the Telco2.0 Executive Brainstorm last week, to persuade delegates that the iPad will be a “staggering commercial success”.

His fellow panellists weren’t so convinced that the iPad will be a big hit. Yves Maitre, senior vice president of group devices at Orange, argued that a price tag of 500 euros without subsidies probably isn’t low enough for the mass-market. Dean Bubley, a senior associate of the Telco2.0 initiative, was also sceptical that there is a large market for the iPad and its imitators.

But Kramer was in little doubt. He pointed out that the price of the iPad will fall over time and that clever marketing and content deals, such as the Vogue example, will have consumers digging deep to buy the new device.

For me, Kramer is right to highlight easy access to cool content as a key sales-driver for the iPad, but the kind of exclusive content deals he envisions may be tricky to pull off. Like any new hardware format, the iPad will have to work its way through the usual chicken and egg problem. To get exclusive deals, Apple will have to convince content providers that the iPad has both critical mass and kudos. And some commentators would argue that the iPad, which has been described as little more than an oversized iPhone, won’t get either without exclusive content.

Even so, Apple may be able to use its hefty advertising budget and its marketing savvy to magic up the chicken and egg at the same time. Its campaign to convince content and software developers that the iPad is destined to be a mass-market (or at least mass-affluent) device is well underway. Yesterday, Apple announced that it had sold its one millionth iPad on Friday – 28 days after its introduction, which compares with 74 days with the first iPhone. It added that developers have created 5,000 apps that take advantage of the iPad’s “Multi-Touch” interface, while iPad owners have already downloaded more than 12 million apps and 1.5 million ebooks.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, stoked the notion that the “magical” iPad is a must-have product by claiming that “demand continues to exceed supply.”

Suspend your disbelief

It is easy to be cynical about such statements. Selling one million iPads to Apple devotees and early adopters is the easy bit – selling tens of millions to ordinary people will be the hard part. Still, publishing executives, scrabbling around for new business models, will be tempted to suspend their disbelief and embrace the iPad and the related-iBookstore. After all, they will argue, the iPhone and Apple’s App Store almost single-handedly created a fast-growing new market for software developers. Can’t the iPad do the same for content providers? Reviewers have mostly been positive about the iPad’s magazine apps, praising their readability and even lauding the interactive ads.

But, this time round, Apple does have much more credible competition. With its Kindle device, Amazon kick-started the e-reader market and is working on an iPad rival, which will enable Amazon to better compete for exclusive newspaper or magazine deals with Apple. Moreover, Google and its hardware partners are likely to soon launch low-cost iPad imitators that will make Apple look a little less magical.

Even if Apple does get all the major magazine scoops, ordinary consumers may still not bite. Surely, many fashionistas, in uncertain economic times, will wait a week for the Vogue print edition rather than pay hundreds of dollars or euros for an iPad?