People use them for watching movies, reading books, listening to music, and surfing the Web, but iPads are capable of so much more, especially for small businesses. With long battery life and access to thousands of useful applications, the iPad is a perfect solution for retail businesses, such as shops, salons, and restaurants, to better serve their customer bases.

OPEN Forum writer Lauren Drell compiled six resourceful, creative ways that the iPad can be used to run or increase efficiency of a retail business. Besides being eye-candy for customers, the iPad is excellent as a fan builder, POS machine, waiter, expediter, and platform for housing a customer database.

Apple announced it had sold 25 million iPads at WWDC in June, making it the top-selling gadget of all-time, according to financial analyst Colin McGranahan ^[1], of Bernstein Research.

Read more from OPEN Forum ^[2].