“We’ve got a bunch ordered that we can’t get yet,” she said in an interview.

Apple, known for courting consumers with sleek designs and easy-to-use software, is making inroads with corporations that say the iPad can make workers more productive without putting sensitive customer information at risk, Bloomberg Businessweek.com reported. SAP AG, Tellabs Inc. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz are using the tablet-style computer for tasks as varied as accessing work e-mail, approving shipping orders and calling up on-the-spot auto-finance options.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs announced the iPad in January, touting its ability to deliver games, video, music, Web access and digital versions of books and magazines. Yet companies say it’s widely applicable at work too.

“This iPad thing has taken the world by storm,” said Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. and author of “Empowered,” a book due to be published in September that explores how employees use new technologies. “It came in as a consumer product and very quickly the people who actually bought them were business people.”

IPad Appetite

Last month, Apple said it sold 3 million iPads within 80 days of its release. The company may sell 9.7 million iPads in 2010, says Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers LP in San Francisco. More than half -- 52 percent -- of 770 smartphone users surveyed by Zogby International said they would most likely use a tablet device like the iPad to do work. The study, commissioned by Sybase Inc., was released March 23.

“A lot of businesses right now are in experimentation with these devices,” said Dan Shey, practice director for enterprise at ABI Research in Oyster Bay, New York.

Still, many companies may shun tablet-style computers, which feature smaller screens and won’t let business people switch back and forth between tasks as quickly as bigger machines. Rivals including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc. are getting into tablets too -- so Apple’s lead may narrow.

Overcoming Reservations

For now, workplace adoption of the iPad stands to benefit Cupertino, California-based Apple while undermining competing makers of computers that run Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. Many companies initially chafed at letting employees use iPhones for business amid concerns that they may not keep corporate data secure. That resistance ebbed after Apple in 2008 released a version of iPhone software with beefed-up security and better support for corporate e-mail.

Similarly, a growing number of companies have begun letting employees use Apple’s Macintosh computers in addition to, or in place of, Windows-based PCs.

Apple spokesman Simon Pope declined to comment, referring instead to remarks by Jobs, who said on May 31 that “customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad.”

With their smaller screens, inability to multitask and lack of keyboards, tablets may not soon replace bigger computers for many work-related tasks. The iPad’s display, for example, is 9.7 inches (25 centimeters). By 2015, less than one-fourth of personal computers sold will be tablet-style, Forrester says.

Coming Competition

As popular as the iPad may be for businesses now, it may soon face competition from rivals including Hewlett-Packard, Dell Inc., LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., which plan tablet computers. Cisco said on June 29 it too will release a tablet that will be able to handle high-definition video conferencing and may be available in early 2011.

Some companies may also be reluctant to entrust their data to the iPad after a breach on the AT&T Inc. website revealed the e-mail addresses of as many as 114,000 iPad users.

Apple aims to keep its products secure in part by carefully vetting the applications that can be downloaded onto it. Still, the process is “not foolproof, it will be subverted eventually,” said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer of Helsinki-based security firm F-Secure.

Reservations aside, Wells Fargo saw how quickly the iPad might take hold amid businesses the weekend it was released. Finance executives of large companies -- those that generate more than $50 million in sales -- accessed corporate accounts with iPads, says Amy Johnson, a Wells Fargo vice president who works on the company’s online portal and mobile strategy.

‘Paperless’ President

Johnson used one of the iPads bought by Wells Fargo to demonstrate financial products during a May 13-14 conference. She says she now carries the iPad with her everywhere.

The same goes for Rob Enslin, North America president at SAP AG, the world’s largest maker of business-management software. Enslin says that when he travels, the only device he carries besides a Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry is the iPad. “It’s allowed me to almost run a paperless office,” said Enslin, who uses it to access business applications, briefing documents, customer information and other data.

SAP, based in Walldorf, Germany, also works with clients to put its products on mobile devices including the iPad. Tellabs, for instance, collaborated with SAP and Sybase on an iPad app that lets managers quickly approve shipping of customer orders.

Mercedes Showrooms

“We also have three or four different applications lined up behind this that will help us with better inventory control,” said Jean Holley, chief information officer at Tellabs, based in Naperville, Illinois.

Other companies using the iPad at work include Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz. Sales representatives in 40 U.S. dealerships in late May began using iPads on showroom floors to order on-the- spot financing options for customers, says Andreas Hinrichs, vice president of marketing at Mercedes-Benz Financial.

The company now is considering doling out iPads to all of its 350 U.S. dealerships.

At Wells Fargo, Minich is waiting for an iPad after her boss made off with the one she expected to be assigned to her.

Writen by: Rachael King, Bloomberg