The conventional wisdom, apparently confirmed by flattened PC sales, is that the iPad is cannibalizing sales from traditional personal computers. Apple admits that even Mac sales are being hurt somewhat, but the greater impact is to the Windows PC, since they still have a far greater market share. But Apple, of course, considers a sale a sale, even if a customer switches from one product to another.

This is certainly quite logical. After all, the iPad performs many of the functions that are traditionally handled by a PC, and a greater and greater percentage of people are therefore using it as another “screen” or device, or just giving up on PCs entirely.

The corporate world has embraced the iPad. According to Apple, most of the so-called Fortune 500 companies are either testing them or deploying them to employees. But there has been another side effect, one that may not have been anticipated. If the trend continues, both printer makers and paper companies will have lots to be concerned about.

According to a survey from Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, tablet users are printing less. As reported in a recent AppleInsider story, according to a survey of 700 tablet users in the U.S., some 33% indicated they were printing “somewhat less” while 13% indicated they are printing “significantly less” after using iPads.

These figures are certainly understandable. It’s easier to just download a corporate document and other material on an iPad, and read it through iBooks rather than print and collate loads of copies.

Now this development is somewhat surprising, since we’ve all heard about the “paperless office” for years, almost from the arrival of the first personal computer. After all, if you can read the document on the screen, why waste trees and ink printing copies? But it never turned out that way. As more and more personal computers were set up in homes and offices, more and more printers were sold with them. It started with impact printers, and later laser, inkjet and other formats. Printer makers have made huge profits selling you ink and toner to feed those printers, and paper companies are only too happy to fill the demand.

Certainly the printer makers are encouraging you to use there products as much as you can. They tout faster output, photo quality prints. Why take your photo files to the local supermarket or drug store to get prints when you can do it yourself? If it doesn’t look right, print another copy. Not to worry. If you run out of ink, the local office supply store will refill the cartridges or sell you consumables from the original manufacturer. And don’t forget the paper.

Indeed, the local Office Max stores in my area have a special deal if you buy two 500-sheet packs of paper. If they forget to remind you about the offer at the checkout counter, you are entitled to a free soft drink. How can you miss?

But most of those printed materials, other than family photos, will either be filed away or thrown out. What a waste!

Software companies have long given you electronic documentation. Some car makers are even considering paperless options for those thick manuals. When you buy the luxury Hyundai Equus, for example, you get your owner’s manual — and it’s a big one on such vehicles — on a spanking new iPad. But don’t expect a free iPad for low-end compact just yet. The Equus, which starts at $59,000, is clearly expensive enough to absorb the price of an iPad. You won’t see one on Hyundai’s $12,545 Accent, or any of their more affordable vehicles (unless they go with a cheap Kindle), but you can see the trend.

Now I’ve only gradually become accustomed to living with as little paper as possible. I read a fair amount of research material on my 27-inch iMac and iPhone. I still print schedules for the radio shows, but I find that more and more documentation is left on the screen. The office printers aren’t used near as much as they used to be, and I do not have to be near as concerned about the budget-busting prices of consumables. When the Office Max cashier asks me if I need some paper, I can just say no and mean it.

But it’s taken a long time for me to reach that point. Over the years, I have done a fair amount of desktop publishing work, using QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign, which required checking the printed output for color accuracy and the precise placement of text and artwork, functions that seldom work as efficiently on a computer screen.

From a business standpoint, not having to constantly feed a printer can be a huge cost savings over time. It might even help fund the purchase of more and more iPads. But the companies who build printers aren’t going to be so happy how things have changed. Maybe they’ll cut the prices of those costly consumables to try to encourage you to continue to get hard copy.

My response is this: When you watch a sci-fi movie showing our future, such as “Star Trek,” when was the last time you saw them actually printing something?

On the heels of reports that the iPad 3 will be launched at an Apple media event on March 7th, there’s one other story that may be a game-changer, if true. According to yet another set of published reports, Apple has been sampling components for an 8-inch iPad with suppliers. The theory goes that such a model would, at a lower price, really cramp the style of the companies who build 7-inch tablets, such as the Amazon, with the Kindle Fire.

If Apple were to consider a “mini” iPad, it would certainly turn Apple’s position about such products on its heels. Consider what Steve Jobs said at a media event in 2010, where he asserted that the display on a 7-inch tablet was too small, that manufacturers ought to ship them with “sandpaper,” so customers could file down their fingers so they could work comfortably on the smaller device.

Now it’s also true that only one 7-inch tablet, the Amazon Kindle Fire, has seen success. Some suggest it’s because of the cheap price, no doubt the result of Amazon’s decision to sell the Fire at cost or somewhat above cost, hoping to benefit from sales of e-books and other products and services. Indeed, the trend has been for such companies as Samsung — and apparently even Amazon with the next Fire — to move to larger display sizes roughly on a par with the iPad after failing with tinier tablets.

The reports about this 8-inch iPad speak of it having a screen resolution that’s identical to the current iPad, which would mean that existing iPad apps would scale properly. The iPad 3 will reportedly have doubled resolution, at roughly 260 pixels per inch, meaning something akin to the iPhone’s Retina Display.

I suppose, if the stories are true, eight inches would be a more usable form factor than seven inches, though still a mite tiny, particularly for e-books and textbooks. Then again, it’s not so much smaller than the 9-inch displays on the original PowerBook 100 and “classic” all-in-one Macs, which had much lower resolution and hence room for less stuff on the screen. Maybe an iPad mini would be the magic compromise, and if Apple could deliver the goods for maybe $299 at the entry level, they’d put Amazon in a real bind.

However, the fact that Apple might be sampling components for a product doesn’t guarantee that product will ever see the light of day. There are certainly iPad prototypes of different sizes in Apple’s test labs. As the market matures, Apple will no doubt continue to test various screen sizes to find the ones they believe will be useful and successful. But it’s also true that, if lots of customers like the Kindle Fire after the initial excitement wears off, Apple would find a way to deliver a smaller iPad.

Then again, Jobs was talking about seven inches, not eight. But that doesn’t mean the rumors should be taken seriously. I suppose there could be some unexpected announcements at Apple’s iPad media event. And it’s a sure thing the event will take place, since the right members of the media, who have a lock on such information, have given it authority.

But it may well be that an 8-inch iPad might not arrive until the fall, the better to serve as potential stocking stuffers during the holiday season, or maybe for school systems. If Apple is only sampling parts now, it wouldn’t seem likely that a finished product would be ready any earlier.

Now when it comes to other potential products from Apple, there is that rumored Apple “smart” TV, iTV, or whatever you want to call it. The only update on the potential for such a product has it that the name iTV is a non-starter. It’s already used by a commercial TV network in the UK. Although Apple has loads of cash on hand, I doubt that the network, having established that name and its content, would consider giving Apple the rights to their trade name.

The remaining question is whether Apple really wants to get involved in the TV set business, or just deliver a souped up Apple TV set top box with far more content offerings. One story has it that Apple would simply strike deals with existing cable and satellite providers. If that’s the case, you’d merely launch an app for the service to which you subscribe to be able to check the schedule, change channels, and record your favorite shows. But the question is whether you’d have to attach the unit to your existing set top box, because of the need for a special card that activates the service, or whether it could be done with an app and a simple login.

Such a move would seem to put Apple in the same business as TiVO. Sure, Apple could simply enhance iTunes and deliver a full-blown TV subscription service that’s streamed direct to you. But how existing ISPs would handle the expected growth in bandwidth consumption is anyone’s guess. They might charge you a lot more, meaning that your bills for both the Internet and TV programming would increase sharply. That wouldn’t help Apple build a big customer base.

But that’s a story for another day and another time.

This week, one of the cable TV news outlets ran a short story about Apple suing Samsung once again over patent issues. But it was just the latest of many legal skirmishes that have been going on almost since the first iPhone debuted. Sometimes you wonder if any of these companies actually have time to sell products, because they’re so busy contending with lawsuits.

There was even a published report recently that pegged Apple’s legal bill, so far, at over $100 million, although that has not been officially confirmed. But since the lawsuits are being litigated in a number of countries around the world, and Apple no doubt uses the best and brightest lawyers in those countries, I wouldn’t be surprised if that total was close to the truth.

It appears the legal wars are being played on two fronts. First involves so-called FRAND patents. The term stands for “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms,” which generally involve licensing industry standard patents to different companies at, as the term implies, “fair” rates. The argument here is that Apple is supposedly being asked to pay a larger fee per unit to license some of those technologies.

Perhaps the most telling example is Motorola, since they own patents to some of the key wireless technologies. But in one curious example, Motorola is reportedly seeking separate payments for Apple’s use of Qualcomm chips that incorporate Motorola patents. Since the price Apple pays for those chips already includes the intellectual property fees, so why would Motorola want to go to a third party and ask for more?

Understand, this whole patent business is confusing, contradictory, and there are so many gray areas that it’s hard to know how courts or regulatory authorities might rule on any individual case. These issues even confound lawyers, so I’m not about to attempt to sort the issues out.

The other issues involves patents Apple has been granted for exclusive features they’ve created for their products. A recent example is “data detectors” feature on the Mac OS and iOS, where you click (or tap) on an item, such as a phone number or shipper’s tracking number, to get relevant information about that piece of data. I use it all the time to track packages direct from emails containing the shipping information, or to add someone’s contact info to Address Book.

Apple’s genius is in devising a way for the OS to figure out what the data means, and that it is most always right is a tribute to great engineering. Having gotten a patent for this invention, Apple has already succeeded in winning an infringement case against HTC.

In the latest legal filing, Apple is going after the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the flagship product for Google’s Android 4.0 platform. That’s the one called “Ice Cream Sandwich.” Another invention cited in Apple’s lawsuit is the slide to unlock feature that first appeared in the original iPhone. If the courts decide that data detectors, slide to unlock and other key Apple patents have been violated, it isn’t just Samsung who may be forced to pay damages, or remove the features from all infringing products. Google might be forced to reengineer Android 4.0 as well, something that will impact all future devices that might incorporate that OS.

All right, I’m not going to say Apple doesn’t have the right to protect their intellectual property and attempt to stop other companies from using the fruits of their creativity. That’s one reason why there are patents, and you have to think that if these other tech companies have smart enough engineers, they ought to be able to find workarounds or develop their own exclusive features. You also wonder whether Google understood the consequences of allegedly cribbing features from the iOS, or maybe their legal teams advised them that they could find enough gray areas in the patents to emerge victorious. Or, perhaps, pay licensing fees and be done with it.

Of course, Apple isn’t inclined to want to license proprietary OS technologies, although they have made some features industry standard and even open source. For example, the open source WebKit is used as the rendering engine for the majority of mobile Web browsers on the planet, and even the popular Google Chrome browser.

By the same token, Apple’s competitors have the right to patent their own inventions and demand royalties for their use. That’s only fair. What’s more, if a company doesn’t do what’s necessary to enforce their patents, they might as well give them away.

It has certainly been suggested that patents are granted far too easily, that many so-called inventions are simply minor alterations of existing products or features, or are so general that protection shouldn’t be granted. But changing those laws is not within the power of any individual company, or even all of them if decided to work together to push for more equitable patent systems around the globe.

What makes the whole messy affair even more confusing is the fact that it may take years to resolve the lawsuits over any individual patent. During that time, new patents and updated technologies may make those original products or features largely irrelevant.

Worse, any hope for a fast resolution is little or none. If anything, that $100 million that Apple may have spent on legal fees may only be the tip of the iceberg as these legal actions grow in number and intensity. If nothing else, I can imagine that some startup companies might just want to go into another business rather than cope with the danger of potential intellectual property lawsuits, or at least make sure they have enough venture capital to pay their lawyers.

If you’ve followed what’s happening at Google, and the ongoing upgrades to the Android mobile platform, you’ve no doubt heard about version 4.0, code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich.” It’s said to offer across-the-board feature and performance improvements. If you’ve chafed over lagging screen refresh and frequent crashes, no doubt you’d love to update your Android smartphone or tablet.

But actually getting that update may be a total exercise in futility. You see, as of the time I wrote this article, it appears that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus may be the one and only smartphone to feature Android ICS, although I realize others will be available soon. Right now, the other Android-powered gear you might want to buy will be loaded with a previous version of the OS, and it’s not version 3 or “Gingerbread,” since that was designed strictly for tablets. Instead, you will get a version 2.x OS bearing the same code-name, or maybe something older.

Are you with me so far?

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