In spite of Microsoft’s attempts to convince the enterprise folks that the iPad is inadequate, iOS devices, and especially the iPad, are doing well in the enterprise market segment. Apparently, they’re doing so well that RIM itself has fallen behind and SAP rolled out 1,000 iPads to its employees a few months ago. The recent additions in iOS 4 and 4.2 for business users surely helped along the way in getting iPhones and iPads into offices and large companies. But the iPad, thanks to its larger screen and notebook-like features, is set to produce even bigger results in 2011.

According to Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes, the iPad is “far ahead” of competitors in the tablet market; without setting up a salesforce, Apple is “listening to enterprise customers”. More and more corporate users are quickly shifting to the iOS environment and, most of all, they are bringing these devices to work. The popularity of the App Store and the fact that thousands of applications are available and continually updated in the Business category helps these users install work-related software on their devices, which are also used for personal purposes. As Reitzes notes, this is “the consumerization of IT”. And when the App Store doesn’t provide the right tools to deploy applications on a large scale, wireless app distribution introduced in iOS 4.2 allows enterprises to host and wirelessly distribute their own in-house apps, both on WiFi and 3G.

Last, Reitzes believes 47 million tablets will be sold in 2011, including 33.7 million  iPads. Similar numbers were shared by analysts Wolf and Fidacaro earlier this week.

Dear iPad owners, according to a recent study by Retrevo Gadgetology gadgets don’t make you attractive to the opposite sex. Most specifically, the iPad doesn’t make you any sexier. “How is that even possible?”, you may ask. Well it turns out, men and women surveyed by Retrevo Gadgetology think reading books, carrying a cool phone or laptop will make you more interesting and worth consideration. We can hear you: iBooks and the Kindle app are the future and there’s no way you’re going back to paper. Still, iPad owners and geeks alike: the tablet won’t get you another date. Perhaps a new MacBook Air will. It’s so thin, after all.

But hey, we’re pretty sure it’s still better to just use the iPad than carry it around like this. Because that would make you less masculine. [via TUAW]

Pulse, the social news reader for iPad, was updated last night to include a number of optimizations and new features. With the release of the new Flipboard a few months ago, Pulse had to play catch-up to face the iPad app of the year, which was updated with better Facebook integration, Google Reader support and huge improvements to the interface and navigation. Pulse, however, was never based on the same concept of Flipboard: where Flipboard is a social magazine that aggregates content from Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader, Pulse is a wall for your news. Moving out of RSS feeds to embrace Facebook links confirms the news wall theory.

The latest update to Pulse is aimed at enhancing speed and Google Reader sync. The app will now store changes offline and sync them back as soon as an internet connection becomes available. On the engine side, Alphonso Labs improved image loading times, refresh and scrolling, which feels much smoother now. The app was never really fluid for me, and I expect things to get even better once the iPad 2 with a faster processor ships.

Images can now be saved to the iPad’s photo library, and search has been refined to direct you to proper news sources. There is no doubt Pulse is getting better over time, however I would like to see a redesign of the interface, which I believe has fallen behind the elegance and minimalism of Flipboard.

Pulse News Reader is available for free here.

In an attempt to revitalize its news and content delivery platform and target the new tablet market, today Yahoo announced Livestand, a digital newsstand for iPad and Android devices that will become available in the form of native apps in the first half of 2011. There is no release date and pricing information for now, but a few details about Livestand have been revealed.

Livestand, according to Yahoo, will deliver “a wealth of ever-changing content” from different publishers that will sign up to the project and it will be geared towards a user’s interest and contexts. It sounds like a personalized news platform à la Flipboard, although it isn’t clear at this point whether the information will be real-time, aggregated from social networks and websites, or published at regular intervals from external sources.

With Livestand, we’re using ad formats that evoke the emotion of TV advertising with a highly-visual magazine-like experience.  And they’re combined with the effectiveness of an Internet ad that’s data-rich, actionable, even location aware. It’s all personalized and in context – just like our content.

In the first half of 2011, you’ll see Yahoo!’s vast digital content library come to life through Livestand from Yahoo! – from Sports, News, Finance, Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo! Contributor Network – as iPad and Android tablet applications.

This is all Yahoo has announced for now. It sounds fairly interesting and promising – honestly though, I’m really looking forward to what comes next for Flipboard. Sorry, Yahoo.