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Figuring Out Why Android Wins On Phones, But Not Tablets
GMGruman writes "Android smartphones have overpowered the iPhone in market share, yet Android tablets barely register in sales versus the iPad. Android tablets are as competitive in most respects against the iPad as Android smartphones are against the iPhone. So why the difference in success? Galen Gruman examines five theories for the gap, and concludes the reason is that Android tablets' real competitor is in fact not the iPad."
The Xoom was half-baked and lacklustre, and no other tablet has been widely available for a reasonable amount of time.
That's all there is to it.
Isn't it obvious?
Doesn't Apple keep lobbing lawsuits at other tablet manufacturers? Seems like everyday I read an article about Apple suing someone for supposed patent infringement. Maybe they see the writing on the wall and are just trying to stall other tablets from getting onto the market for as long as possible.
Android phones would have never taken off if there was only the G1 and the HTC Eris.
Right now while they are some crappy Android tablets there are really only 2. The Galaxy Tab and the XOOM. Give it another year. Just like the iPhone looked unstoppable 2 years ago things will change.
they need to get down to under $200 before they are interesting.
Funny thing is, I would have made the opposite prediction a couple years ago - I would have bet on Android for tablets and the iPhone to continue to dominate smartphones - but I understand now why it went the way it did. I don't think that Android tablets can compare to the iPad experience, mostly due to the apps.
I like Android on the phone and my CR-48, but the iPad is far more interesting to me than an Android tablet is. Part of it is pure diversity - there are some amazing apps and games that only run on iOs; I only need one device to play them/enjoy them, and an iPad is a lot more compelling a game interface than the iPod touch/iPhone is. I expect most productivity apps to either get ported to Android from iOs or at least have a good working equivalent, but games and creative/playful apps, which are distinct and not really replaceable by equivalents, favor iPad. So, it's iPad for reading and games, the Android phone as a PIM (remember that word?) and workhorse smart-phone.
A lot of "fandroids" are actually really Google "fans", or at least tied to the Google eco-system (that fits me, sort of, with the usual caveats and worrying about any corporate entity controlling too much personal information, etc.) - and one can stay within the Google system in your iPad. One thing that distinguishes Google from Apple is that the latter really is about the one "right" and "best" way to do something, while the former is about having several ways (many still in beta) of skinning many cats (some of which haven't even been discovered yet.)
Lots of Android tablets came out that didn't have Honeycomb and thus weren't really ready to be used as tablets. They are fun for hackers in some cases (like the G Tablet) but not ready for prime time. The only Honeycomb tablet out so far is the Motorola Xoom. The Xoom fails in epic fashion on price - it has similar hardware specs as my $300 G Tablet for twice the price. I would never buy it because I'd feel like a huge sucker.
Apparently Honeycomb needs a bit more polish before it's ready.
But until Google lets other manufacturers come out with Honeycomb tablets, or releases the Honeycomb source code, we aren't going to have Android tablets that have mass appeal.
This doesn't really require a particularly in depth analysis, or any conspiracy theories or anything else.
a 2 year old can use the iPad, as can non-techie grandparents. that's why apple is selling them by the millions.
nothing to do with platform loyalty or netbooks or supply chain or anything. it's a good product that appeals to millions of people.
So basically we are seeing this again. Google gave Motorola a treat and let it ocme out with the first tablet. No one who is not an uber early adopter is going to buy this table because, unlike the iPhone and iPad for which Apple will provide a couple years of support(my 3 is still getting updates), there is no way to know if the real Honeycomb is going to run on it. We have at least 5 vaporware machines, but they do not exist? So, do we do like MS fanbois and wait for a machine that may or may not be real, or simply buy an iPad?
It is way to early to say whether Honeycomb will succeed in that tablet market. Google is still playing games, and no casual end user would touch it anymore than the Nexus one. It is very likely when there are 10 models out there, all running variations of Android, and if the look and feel and interconnectivity are superior to Apple, then we will likely see Honeycomb take a significant share of the market. However, as the iPhone now, it is likely that the iPad will take the top position for quite a while. However, unless the tablets can undercut the price of the iPad(meaning not the xoom for $600) they will have a hard time competeing. Price, is, after all why the 3GS is in the number two sales position, even though it is an extremely anemic phone.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Android smartphones have overpowered the iPhone in market share, yet Android tablets barely register in sales versus the iPad. Android tablets are as competitive in most respects against the iPad as Android smartphones are against the iPhone. So why the difference in success?
Having tried both iPads and Android tablets I'd say the reason is simple. Android is a mobile phone OS that was hastily adapted for tablets and it shows. If they ever manage to come up with a good purpose designed tablet version of the Android UI that assessment may change. The Android system settings are also sometimes annoyingly unintuitive. For example, when the mail client told me I needed to approve access permissions before I cold connect to Exchange 2010 it took me about half an hour of clicking about in the system settings pane before I realized thats the wrong place to look. You have to pull down the curtain on the menu bar and click the task item in the list you get there to fix this. Another thing is that while iTunes store definitely contains a whole mess of crappy apps the Android market is even worse.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Android tablets don't have a single-minded and focused marketing (spelled h-y-p-e) machine behind them.
Tablets are doomed to fail except in vertical markets where consuming data is more common than producing data. For personal use they're a fad, little more than an overly capable media player. The people who might want a tablet but don't want an iPad are few.
I didn't see any actual sales figures to support the claim that Android is doing poorly on tablets. Considering that this is only the second quarter of sales, I think it's a little early. Many manufacturers haven't even released sales figures yet!
Also, strictly from a personal perspective, I know five people with Android tablets, but only one with an iPad. Interestingly, all the Android tablets are from Archos, which is rarely mentioned in articles.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I wonder if it is simply that they don't understand the market and at the same time trying to trump the iPad without understanding what the users want. It could also be because they are scared of cannibalizing the markets they already have.
While not Android, Microsoft for the moment, seems to be failing to capture the market because they see tablets as hand held PCs, rather than a totally different type of device.
I think to understand the iPad you need to understand where Steve Jobs is coming from. An interview/a in Wired back in 1996 makes it clear. Essentially the computer of the future won't feel like a computer and would feel intuitive. I think the iPad does that well, even if there is room for improvement. Hardware manufactures don't get that and Google doesn't seem to be providing that direction either. The dimensions of some tablets also don't work because while they are good for one thing aren't good for others. In many way a National Geographic sized device makes a lot of sense, since is an acceptable format for reading magazines and is not a hindrance when watching movies. On the other hand, the Playbook for example, feels optimized for movies, but doesn't feel like it is comfortable for other uses.
Oddly enough I feel that HP actually has the potential to do something really good with WebOS, with regards to the tablet space, but only time will tell. They might surprise us yet.
As for other ways that tablets could be used, you only need to look at science fiction films and TV series' for ideas. Star Trek and Earth Final Conflict for example.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Android tablets have been out for a few months.There's your answer.
Sell an android 3.0 tablet wifi-only tablet for around $400 and I'll buy one. Not until then. Notion ink almost did that with an Android 3.0 like OS but doesn't seem to be able to handle even a small number of customers. But once the android 3.0 source is out, I assume there will be a ton of cheap competitors and then the game will change.
The answer is, there hasn't yet been a good design at a compelling price. I was almost sold on the Galaxy tablet, because it had something that even the ipad didn't have, (a 7 inch form factor) but there were some parts that were half baked, and Samsung priced it out of the market. I'm seeing similar things from the other major players -- they want a premium, high-end-laptop price point on designs that haven't been completely thought out.
Moreover, the tablet-centric version of Android (3.0) isn't completely mature yet, and is running on very few actual tablets.
And finally, the rash of cheap wannabes with resistive screens and Android 1.X are muddying the waters. Fred and Ethyl aren't going to know the difference between a Coby and a Toshiba, so they'll buy the $149.95 model and be disappointed.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Lets see, when the iPad came out there was no other tablet on the market and years of marketing hype which created a pent up need. The iPad came out and they sold a crap load of them. There is also the Apple fanboy factor "If it is Apple I must have it". Many, if not most, people who would buy a tablet now have iPads thereby deceasing overall demand for tablets.
An Android pad with a real tablet OS comes out, is panned by the tech community and people wonder what it didn't sell as many as the iPad? Most people who want a tablet but have yet to buy a iPad are a patient bunch and will wait till the right one comes out. From all the reviews, the Zoom is not the right tablet.
If you want to compare sales compare how many iPads were sold in the same time period as the release of the Zoom. Then the comparison may be valid.
If you like Apple you really only have the 1 choice in Apple products. You either buy the iPad 1.0 or you wait until the expected iPad 2.0 comes out. Really, Apple is the one that competes with Apple. For an Apple fan, there is no alternative.
As an Android fan there will be a lot of Android tablets. I'm waiting around to see who comes out with the best one that fits my needs.
No, really at $450 (Acer Iconia A500).
The reviews aren't exactly glowing though. It's cheaper than the iPad at least. Have you heard any news about it though? No? That's because it seems Acer's PR department doesn't seem to know how to do its job. How can it take off if no one knows about it?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The real reason is obvious. Android phones do well because they are heavily subsidised on contract - they're practically given away free, and are therefore expanding to fill the space vacated by the likes of Nokia. They're being largely taken up by people who want "something like an iPhone, bu cheaper."
There is no equivalent maket niche for tablets. If the "thing that's like an iPad" costs the same as an iPad, people will buy the iPad.
It might have something to do with this: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1273
People might be looking at the problem backwards. It's not what Android is doing poorly that's hurting it in the tablet market, as much as what Apple is doing poorly that's hurting it in the phone market. The answer is carrier exclusivity. iOS gained on Android in the US phone market for the first time in a long time recently, because they started selling Verizon phones. Perhaps as iPhones begin to support more carriers (assuming Apple can scale manufacturing enough), Apple will start to take bigger chunks.
Own a htc inspire and an iPad 2. Used to have an iPhone 3GS.
My inspire cost me $20 at Costco and is faster than an iPhone 4 in some ways. An iPhone costs $300 for the cheap one with activation and tax.
There is no subsidy on wifi tablets and the 3G ones cost more due to the chipsets and licensing which eats away the subsidy some carriers give.
iOS is more polished, battery life is better, app store is better unless all you want is widgets and live wallpaper, security is better and you don't have to check permissions for each app, and iOS multitasking is better and more efficient. And there is no crazy system of moving some apps to sd card, killing processes manually and some of the other nonsense I see on android. The other day I downloaded an app from the market that says you have to root your phone for it to work. Another one says you need something called launcher pro and other apps. Ridiculous.
There are thousands of iPad apps in the app store. The android market has less than 100. My 3 year old uses the iPad for educational apps which the app store rules. The other tablets are being sold based on specs and the inclusion of flash for pr0n
Demographically we are in a baby boom. In NYC a lot of schools are overcrowded due to all the kids. Apple figured this out and is marketing the right way. Everyone else is fighting for the single guy surfing porn market.
The into iPad is $499. It's a dual core arm a9 CPU, very good gpu, excellent screen, etc. Just as good or better specs as everyone else and better dev support. Choice is easy.
As geeks we're often tempted to think of things in terms of specs. But end users are prone to ask two things: what can it do, and how well can it do it?
My cousin loves her iPad because of its killer app: Netflix. She can stream at least two movies before she has to plug it in to stream several more. It's perfect for a road trip, or a long wait at the doctor's office. It's relatively seamless. She can check email and browse the internet without having to tech her way into a wifi hotspot. Youtube pretty much works, and she can have an itunes collection available with a minimum of fuss.
As the geek, I love Android and its raw power. I can wifi tether, check weird 3rd-party google email addresses, and even hop into SSH for some real fun.
But none of those things interest my cousin, the end user. She just wants to stream netflix whilst rolling down the highway, and until Android tablets either a) latch onto a couple of those sorts of killer apps or b) create a new killer app from scratch, there'll be no mystery as to the winner of the tablet war. Indeed, there will be no war at all.
Has anyone seen the Asus Transformer? $100 less than an iPad 2 and it sold out minutes after being put up at Amazon and every other retail outlets. It's on backorder for weeks.
Smart Phones of this level actually are a new phenomenon - they enable me to do things i couldnt before.
tablets, currently, however, are just a 'cooler', 'lighter' netbook-wannabee, that cannot do what the netbooks can do. as you can remember, the latest generation of netbooks already had become fully capable small laptops, with their normal hard disks, usual oses (linux, or windows), and 10 inch screens, 1-3 gb rams, and are capable of running any program their memory and cpu allows.
all they bring me, is a lighter device, 'cooler' in appearance, that can NOT do what i need to do with netbooks.
it doesnt enable me for anything. it is much limited compared to netbook. i cant use what i use in my netbook, small laptop etc, in a tablet. and just for the little cool factor and lightness it would bring, i am in no way inclined to shell out 500 bucks minimum.
ipads sold, yes, because, there was already present apple customer base that valued these limited devices. it fills their needs. it doesnt fit the needs of the majority of people that actually need to do more than simple tasks limited to watching video, listening to music, updating facebook etc.
basically, what we need is a netbook that is lighter, and optional keyboard.
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More often than not, integrated design by a single vendor has shown to win in the short term, but has eventually lost out to component-oriented design by multiple vendors. At first I thought the App Store might threaten to prevent that from happening in the case of iOS. But Android now has one too and most serious iApp developers have or are in the process of porting their apps. I think the stage is getting set for Apple to cry copy-cat all over again 2 decades after Windows "copied" the Mac. It will be a very interesting watch...
Only Apple fanboys want to spend $500 on a glorified couch web surfing device.
I think I'm typical of the larger population - I'd be willing to spend a couple of hundred bucks to replace my physical morning paper with a device, but no more than that. The Android tablets cost more than that at the moment, perhaps because Apple sucked up the world supply of some key parts (displays most likely). Once the supply chain situation clears up, we'll see cheap droid tablets and they'll gobble up market share. At $200 - tons of sales. At $500 - not so much, leave it to the Apple fanboys.
There have been tons of droid commercials. People know android as a phone OS.
-Obviously you want something faster and better on your tablet than on your phone.
Maybe one should brand one as Android CE and one as Android XL (same source of course..)
People need to stop with this idea that if it doesn't immediately sell better than Apple it isn't going to be more popular in the long run.
We saw that same shit with phones. Android came out and it was rather anemic. Only a few phones used it and they were nice, but not all that polished. So a bunch of dipshits screamed about how it was clear this would never be an iPhone competitor. However today there are just loads of Android phones, and they are extremely polished (as I've said before, HTC's Sense UI is real slick). They are quickly cutting in to the iPhones marketshare and are predicted by a number of people to be the top by a long margin in a few years.
In other words, it can very well start slow, but build up a hell of a lot of steam with time.
Same could happen with tablets. Apple had a shitload of iPad sales right off because it is Apple and currently they are the fashionable "must have" gadget company and they were the first real product in the "Not an expensive laptop," tablet market. Well and good, but that doesn't mean that Android may not overcome that in the long run.
Let's see where things stand in a year or two. That'll be what's really telling. If in two years Android tablets are still floundering, then ya they probably will never really take off. However in two years they may well be making large inroads on the iPad.
We'll just have to see.
I absolutely disagree with that statement. Yes, it may have been half-baked and lacklustre, but that's not all there is to it. I think he makes a very good point in the article that the attitude of a lot of non-Apple fanboys is "why use one of these tablets, which are glorified smartphones with a big screen, when I could use a real computer?" He's right that while those users really like their Android phones, that an Android tablet may not be adopted due to laptops and, to some extent, netbooks, out-competing them.
This is of course anecdotal, but I firmly fall into that category. I have no desire to pay 600 or more dollars for a keyboardless toy. Because that really is what these tablets are. They do lightweight web surfing, lightweight games, and that's pretty much it. I'm not going to sit and write reports, code, play real games, etc, using one of those. I am open to tablet sized devices, but only if they do something really different than what my laptop can do. For example, I own a kindle because the e-ink screen is dramatically better for reading than any LCD based option. Everything about it is purpose built to excel at reading, and it does. But an iPad? Other than booting quickly it does nothing my laptop can't do, and there is much my laptop can do that it can't (and for quick booting and light web surfing in a pinch, I have my Android phone).
The other comment I'll add is this: He says in the article that there are a few Windows tablet fanboys. I guess count me as one of them, because I do love a Windows 7 convertible tablet (with a keyboard). It eats the iPad for lunch. It runs real, full featured programs... any Windows program I want. In college, I can fold it flat, hold the stylus and write on the screen just like I would a piece of paper. Microsoft OneNote's handwriting search is just about perfect... I can find any note I ever took, even in my own handwriting, in less than a second. And I can take engineering notes... just try doing that with any other device, whether the iPad or normal laptop... there are so many special symbols you'll never be able to. And the screen is multitouch (and this tablet is a few years old). Yes, the iPhone is cheaper (but much less powerful), lighter, and can boot faster, and I don't deny that. But that's what my Android smartphone is for, and when I want a real tablet to do real things with, I pick Windows 7.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
they said the same thing the first few years of android on cells. Give it awhile.
Lack of tablet apps. That's the reason I own an iPad right now and not an Android tablet. Running an Android phone app on an Android tablet is just as ugly as running an iPhone app on an iPad is... but most i* apps have an iPad specific version. Android apps don't.
This is probably chicken and egg - the devs don't have tablets because the XOOM was just not very appealing. I'm looking forward to the Acer and Samsung tablets.
In that respect apple and tablets have a lot in common (next to useless)
What's really going to be amazing is if Microsoft, which started even slower, manages to pull something off in the phone arena. I've heard more screaming from pundits about how they will never be a contender than I've heard about any other company, but the Windows 7 phone wasn't half bad for a first try. I'd love to see them grab some market share, if for no other reason than three huge players competing will really start to push the quality envelope.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Fandroids spent the last year claiming tablets are stupid and nobody wants one. It took so long for a half-usable android tablet to come out that they started believing it.
That and Apple has mail order, a line of retail stores, and other outlets (Best Buy, KB Toys(!), Wal*Mart, Verizon stores, AT&T stores, etc). Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc. etc, have traditionally sold only through telcos and only after the telco lobotomizes it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Wins on phones? Here in Chicago US Cellular was offering Buy 1 get 5 free on android phones. We all know who has biggest share of smart phone profits which is the point of all of this and has not needed fire sales to pump up volumes.
Off-topic, but I don't get the tablet revolution. Am I just getting too old, or am I just not tech-savvy enough? :(
Google has also made no effort to outflank Apple, following Apple's lead in almost every area instead (voice-based search and navigation being the major exceptions)
(And multitasking. And Flash support (albeit crappy). And open-sourcing the whole project. And allowing multiple marketplaces. And allowing development in multiple languages.) Yep, Google's just gathering crumbs off of Apple's table here...
Most people buy a phone because they need one so they start with that idea, go to a phone shop and select a product based on various attributes important to them. Examples would be price, appearance, performance, functions. Tablet buyers at the moment start with the idea that they want an iPad so they go out and buy one. They don't decide to buy a tablet because they don't actually need one.
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Tablets, including the iPad, compete with netbooks. Apple fanboys would buy an iNetbook in a heartbeat, but Apple won't make them because a cheap one would not uphold their reputation and would compete with their pricey laptops. But an iPad, now there's a deal, cheaper than an Apple laptop. Not as cheap as an old netbook, but those are Windows or Linux and thus not desirable by Apple fanboys.
Whereas those who will stoop to buy a cheap netbook aren't interested in a more expensive tablet which has no keyboard. Lack of a cover to protect the screen may even be a consideration.
Infuriate left and right
There are those pseudo-techy people that want the iPad 2 to look cool and keep up with the Joneses, and it serves them well in that regard. But the rest of us can get by with laptops or netbooks. (really, though. This is basically the tl;dr of what TFA says, but without the slur on iProducts)
Android really took off among the masses when you could get Android phones for short money. Not long ago T-mobile spent a weekend giving away Android phones and they are often available for a lot less money than an iPhone. I suspect a lot of average, non geeky, people are more than willing to go for the cheeper Android phone without a second thought.
When it comes to a tablet, most of them are in the same price range. Why wouldn't you buy the most polished one with the largest number of applications? And perhaps in time there will be good enough Android tablets that are significantly cheeper than the iPad and they will be an easy choice for a lot of people, but given the lack of a subsidy (since the iPad doesn't require a contract and any subsidized Android tablet does), I suspect it will take longer for them to gain a significant price edge on the iPad.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Are the android sales because it is the android PLATFORM or just because people need a new phone and that is what their carrier offers? To me the lackluster sales of Android tablets says that people aren't much into android as they are just phones that people generally buy and use.
Well, I bought an Archos 101, and the implementation of the interface etc is not done very well.
Lots of bugs, not very fast. In fact surfing on the thing is nothing short of frustrating.
I use it primarily to run Adobe's pdf reader. Which, for that it works OK.
It plays a movie, when the player doesn't crash and it works pretty well for mp3's.
Tons of room for improvement.
My other complaint about tablets is they are not as good as netbooks for surfing either, yet they cost the same.
So I think I will not be buying a tablet till I see parts below 28nm size in them. By that time they should be quite well refined.
But right now, the only thing I would consider using my Archos 101 for is PDF reading or listening too music.
Archos as a company doesn't keep its promises either. I was promised flash support for the thing and all we have is unaccelerated flash variants which work very poorly.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Could be the iPhone carrier -- for the longest time, there was only AT&T, and I know many people who really wanted an iPhone but refused to get it via AT&T. Some of them picked an Android phone instead.
For the iPad, choice of cellular carrier may not be that important (different usage model), which might explain why people aren't looking that hard for alternatives.
The article author is very clearly a raging Apple fanboy.
It's downright painful to read his fapping, as he attempts to avoid the most obvious explanation: The ipad is essentially a fashion accessory (much more so than the iphone), and there's really little reason to buy one (especially at a high price) if you aren't buying into Apple's heavy techno beat and synchronized strobe lights.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
One "word": BOGO.
Once they start selling Android tablets BOGO like the phones the tablets might start to be competitive.
The Aandroid phone manufacturers were all cell phone manufacturers. Going to Android wasn't that much of a jump, they just changed the vendor of the OS. None of them have ever built a tablet before, or probable even dreamt of a tablet. They don't have any starting point so don't know what goes into making a good tablet.
Also, Android was good enough for a phone, but good enough doesn't scale.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
>"Figuring Out Why Android Wins On Phones, But Not Tablets"
Android hasn't "lost" on tablets. Real Android tablets (3.0) have only just arrived, and really only one has been available for more than a month- the Xoom (and that was pushed out a few months too soon). How can something that just came out "not win"? Android phones didn't "win" in even a year- it takes time to build a product line and for the word to spread.
Revisit Android tablets in just a year and THEN see how they are doing...
Even more criminal is Asus' Eee Pad Transformer's utter lack of publicity. If I was to get a tablet, it would be that one. Near stock OS, cheap, good-looking, optional keyboard dock transforming it into a Honeycomb netbook, what is there not to like?
Too bad Asus is just as deficient about advertising as Acer.
You may as well see the data too. Estimate of WP7 sales through scraping Facebook App active user data.
Simply put, Windows Phone 7 failed to thrive. It didn't take off. All that estimated $1B in marketing money added up to a big bucket-o-fail. It peaked at less than two percent of share on launch and is trailing off now to less than one fourth of that. Wishing that will change is not going to make it change. For the past month it's not even making up for the people giving up on Windows 6.5.
I, for one, would prefer they didn't gain any market share whatsoever. I would prefer that Microsoft fail in mobile, and that they continue to fail spectacularly by burning huge bonfires of money to no avail. Mobile is the future, and if you look at their suit against Barnes and Noble you will see that their desire for market share is not about innovation, it's not even about money. It's about control. They want to prevent all progress they don't supply. It's not enough for them to win - everybody else must lose also, including the customers. They want to stop all this neat stuff we've been getting the last few years. We like this stuff.
No, we don't need Microsoft for a vibrant competitive environment. Quite the opposite. For a vibrant competitive environment we need them to shrivel away to nothing through wasting all their money on lost causes. From the look of things they're well on their way.
Android tablets will put up the good fight yet. The Nook may save Barnes and Noble, particularly if they get really angry. We just need some tablets to hit the right price points with credible features and decent tablet-base OS. After that choice will win out over The iPad.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You can't actually buy one though...
The Asus transformer android tablet within the first week sold out in most places in the USA. I think the issue is Android tablets have just now really started to have big name backing so comparing an android tablet to a second gen iPAD is a weak argument. Come back and look at the tablet market in February next year when quad core tablets hit the shelves running android 3.2 and the iPAD is still using the same A5 cpu.
no touch, but everything else is good. full control.
The fundamental issue IMHO is content and the ability to consume content. Tablets / touch screens as input devices are really really slow. So the area where they shine is in content consumption. As consumption requires very little user interaction.
There are two primary issues around consumption.
First thing is the tablet version of Android pretty much sucks. The interface still is not complete. This fundamentally complicates and confuses the consumer. The consumer question is "How do I?" At the moment this is not a simple answer.
The Second item is. "Where is my content?" At the moment there is a varied mix of content sources. And to be honest most that are available around the world suck,
In a nutshell the problem with Android tablets is all about content. Will this improve? Absolutely. There is simply to much consumer market pressure for vendors not to address these issues.
Apple at the moment has a huge leg up with iTunes. iTunes combines content and the how to consume in one product. A product that ships with the device. iTunes also works all over the world.
This is why Android tablets suck at the moment!
THey give away a lot of phones for market share. Unfortunately most of those phones can not run most of the Apps from the Market...The Win in phones is somewhat dubious. The make cheap crap and give it away model does not translate well to tablets I guess..
Android needs to attract developers. To do that, developers need to be able to make money and only have to develop for one reference spec.
There is a reason not one model of any Android phone outsells the iPhone 3GS today in the US...
Android, the platform has sold a bunch more than iPhone, the phone. Because Android isn't one company's phone, it's the default free OS that phone vendors besides Apple and RIM adopted en masse. Why? Because by getting on board with Android, phone vendors don't have to pay the license fees, and can cut development costs. Plus they can get some pre-built apps for the phone without having to cultivate their own app market.
As far as phones themselves? iPhone sells far in far higher volume than any one Android phone - it just doesn't outsell the whole Android ecosystem. And won't anymore at this point. But the key metric is really how large, robust, and lucrative the platform app markets are. iOS' App Store dramatically outsells the Android Market right now and probably will for the reasonable future. Why? I think part of the reason is the nature of Android itself, and the phones it goes on. Outside of the passionate few, Android mainly is the generic OS you get when you get that phone that's a step up from the old feature phone you had, and there's no iPhone available as an option (or you don't really care one way or another, you just want the phone that's cheapest on a contract and has a web browser and e-mail).
I think the tablet market is a little different, at least to date. First of all, the iPad came to market as really the first fully-formed vision of a viable tablet. And right now just as the competition starts to catch up, Apple does something to jump ahead again. iPad 2 isn't much better (if at all) technically than the Xoom, but they have design in their favor, roughly identical specs, and Apple has a much more mature app ecosystem and about a year's head start.
It'll take a few years for the competition to even out. And meantime, these newer platforms don't really lend themselves to the old Windows ecosystem model where one company dominates and everyone else fights for scraps. Apple sells millions of iOS devices each quarter (over 20 million last quarter), and all those users reinforce each other, buying upgraded devices eventually and also buying apps. Developers make lots of money writing iOS apps. That isn't going away. At least 2, maybe even 3 platforms will likely survive and thrive for a long time to come. Apple's advantage now is that they are building devices for consumers, not so much for engineers. That's part of their DNA and why Android won't ever "win" outright.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The first round of Android phones were lackluster and uninspired. It wasn't until Android 2.0 that the platform took off. Same goes for tablets.
As much as I hate to admit it (being an iPad 2 owner and Apple stock holder), iPads and its predecessor the iPod are luxuries.
It has often been said that you can't do anything on a tablet that you can on a notebook (this may be changing with some truly innovative new apps but let's go with this for now). So, by definition it is a luxury especially because with the iPad at least you NEED a regular computer to sync to.
The same is (was, before smartphones started decimating this category) true of MP3 players. While being able to listen to music on the go is nice, it is hardly a "need" like a cellphone. However for those who wanted one and could afford it, other factors beyond sheer utilitarianism came to play. Styling, user interface, the "shininess". When you buy a luxury car, the hood ornament is sometimes more important than the MPG.
So this shows the disparities in iPhone versus iPad sales in two ways. When the iPhone came out, many people decided they needed something like it. Either it was unavailable or, due to religious objections they couldn't fathom the idea of buying an Apple product so they got an Android.
With the iPad because it is a luxury, those who bought it (at first at least) are buying a status symbol product. That is why product styling is so important (remember when Samsung took back its latest tablet because it was a millimeter or two thicker than the iPad 2?). I mean for the people who can afford a $500 luxury item as long as you're going to buy it, you might as well get the best. And there are a LOT of rich people in the world (10s of millions of millionaires in the US alone). Think of the fancy watches and expensive cars and jewelry that people buy (and the iPad 2 is like a big piece of jewelry!). Even when reasonable alternatives exist people will wait weeks or pay a substantial premium to get the name brand.
Now, of course, they are finding new, hard to duplicate (on a regular PC) uses, that take advantage of this "magical" device. (And it IS magical, there is something about the immediacy and directness that the touch interface, unencumbered by the abstraction of the hand-to-mouse-to-cursor paradigm, that makes it so). Still is this user interface necessary? No, for now at least it is a luxury (but maybe in time it will become as much a part of our lives as windows and mice).
And who is the master at selling electronic luxuries? Apple.
People need to stop thinking the OS has much to do with this. Hardware comes into play for some people, but even then they're missing the point.
The ecosystem (itunes video and music and the app store) are what still makes Apple hard to beat. The established their beachhead with the ipods and iphone, and considering every app you purchase can be easily copied over to your iPad, THAT'S what many care about.
Only nerds care about the hardware and OS. We're not the majority.
Everyone is new to the tablet game. But lots of companies have been making, marketing, and selling phones. Only Apple know how to market the tablet.
Android has "lost" on tablets because tablets are a fad. Smartphones are practical, easily tranportable and fill most of the roles that a tablet can. Meanwhile netbooks and small notebooks are far more powerful than tablets, only slightly more bulky, and can do most things that a tablet can do, and generally do it better.
While this is of course a generalisation, people that buy android are buying more for practicality than ePeen factor. And it's a well established AnecdoFact(tm) that Apple fanbois are a raving clueless mob that will buy everything that master Jobs tells them to.
Most people have a phone, and most adults 18-35 have a cell phone. Android is available on cheap phones (free with contract) from every carier. iPhones are not. Of course there are more android devices being sold.
Before the iPad, no one thought tablets were worth having. The percentage of the population who has a tablet is tiny compared to the percentage that has a cell phone. The few Android tablets that exist are more expensive.
Given that the two markets are completely different, expecting the outcome to be the same is stupid.
this is a simple one that i think we know the answer to. them answer is in the strength in #s. android won from the shear # of devices made from a variety of manufactures. until the day honey fills the comb...the success will soon follow
even less than the OS is openness. It's funny when I see people on here say Android sells a lot because it is open. I think Android sells a lot because they have buy 1 get 1 sales and many cheap models.
While the iPad may be the biggest competitor, the primary competition for Android tablets are other Android tablets.
It's like the market for Windows PCs, self-builds aside, (maybe even considering those too,) the experience of owning a one is more or less identical across all makers. An HP is little different than a Dell, or a Gateway, or an Asus, or an Acer, or a Sony, or... All the Android tablets are effectively the same: we have usb ports!, we have an SD slot! we have an HDMI port! we have the Android marketplace!
What does iPad have? SD? USB? HDMI? No. It has software, and I don't mean the sheer size of the app store. It's got iMovie, Keynote, Garage Band, etc. all made for iPad, not merely some port shoehorned into iOS. What does Xoom and Galaxy Tab have? They have the Android marketplace with tens of thousands of apps ... none of them made specially for either device.
If any Android tablet maker wants to succeed, they have to first take down the other Android tablets, then take on the iPad. Put some serious effort into app development that makes their tablet's features shine, and show it off in the ads. If it doesn't run on the other tablets, screw 'em, they need to fight for themselves, not for Android. Don't expect others to deliver for you, Apple surely isn't.
The Android app marketplace needs to be icing/sprinkles on top of your Gingerbread/FroYo/Eclair/etc. not the main draw.
One of the stupidest tech questions I've heard in a while. I haven't read the TFA, of course :)
The iPad is shiny, substantial, and satisfying. A bit like a big, juicy steak. Not cheap, not good for you or the ecosystem, but darn delicious. Both sell primarily because of the satisfaction they bring to their consumers.
A phone, on the other hand, does its basic function well even without a visible operating system. It's also something you need and will buy without too much thought. It's like the Taco Bell burrito. Android is its soy-based, meat-flavored filling. Practically free to the manufacturer, and good enough for its purpose.
Though you tolerate soy-filled Mexican fare for $5, you won't order grilled tofu when you go out to eat in a fine restaurant where you'll be shelling out $100. You order a steak -- unless you're a vegetarian or an eco-freak. In the same way, you won't spend $800 on a half-baked Android tablet -- you'll buy an iPad -- unless, of course, you're an Apple-hater or an open-source freak :)
Until Android tablets become dirt cheap or the user experience improves significantly (including a decent market where everything works on every machine), only the vegetarian eco-freaks amongst us will be asking the question in the article!
Actually, they no longer use lead and cadmium in electronics. That means it's probably healthier to eat an iPad than all those paint chips you evidently snacked on as a kid.
executive summary: because it sucks!
Android, at least as of 2.0, was really crap; sure it could make a phone call, and mainly stay alive long enough to complete it, but it still ranked as a horrendous user experience.
I know the geek communituy will huddle around to protect its young, but while you do, can I ask all you Androiders to pull up your calculator and type the following: .0634+.113 SIN
That is, exactly as a TI calculator would provide the answer as=.17548...
Not the android calculator answer of:
SIN(
OK, I pick on calculator because android pushed it as a simple idea of what an app could be if you really didn't give a shit about your customer.
If you did give a shit about your customer, you might take the afternoon to make it behave like Apples; that is, just like a desktop calculator.
Android is like a petulant child hoping for the spotlight. The fan base are so afraid of stating the obvious, they are handing the curtains to Apple.
If you really cared about the possibility of Android, or open source mobile computing, you should hold them to at least the standard Apple does. You don't; You haven't, and like Linux Desktop, Android just continues to suck!
Widescreen, which is much better for modern video (16:10 vs 4:3)
What's really funny to me is how many people claim the iPad is for consumption only, when the aspect ratio of the iPad is far better for creation than a widescreen tablet. Widescreen tablets are (I think) annoying to use vertically, and so end up being targeted more at consumption than creation.
Also the RAM means nothing when your application is tuned to the device. The iPad does quite well with 512MB of ram, even the original was OK with 256 (though some things definitely hit against that limit from time to time)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is really interesting. The first signs of a competing product for the iPad are barely emerging with Honeycomb and the Motorola Xoom. The iPad has the advantage of being out and in development for some years now. People seem to forget that the first android phones (T-Mobile G1 most notably) were not successes either. It was not until Motorola, Verizon, and Google banded together and came up with the Droid (more than one year after the G1) that Android really started to take off. Please do a little more research before posting articles like this. Besides, I thought that the slashdot crowd would go for Android (Linux) over a closed device (iPad 2).....
Phones are (in our current society) a Commodity; everyone "needs" a phone. For most people, they are the Primary Computing Device and Primary conduit in a connected world. The cheapest phone, or the most available phone will do. Android phones are a cheap and available alternative to the iPhone, so appeal to consumers as well as the Technorati.
The role of a Tablet is not as a Primary computing devices, but as a satellite computing device, Tablets are a Luxury. The only people who would purchase a Tablet other than an iPad are Technologists with a Political point of view. Any consumer who does any research whatsoever into Alternatives to the iPad will turn back to the iPad; the benefits of an Android Tablet (better Camera, Card Reader, USB Host, Legacy applet support, etc) pale into insignificance compared to the convenience of the iPad. A cheaper legacy device like a netbook is also significantly better than a Android Tablet in most of these regards too.
There are serious uses of the iPad enabled by the serious diversity of Apple's App Store.
I use mine for teaching. In the olden days I used to have to print my PDFs to read through/highlight before class, assemble my lecture outlines on computer, then print them out and carry them to class, etc. Emailing my students required either looking up their addresses in the school system or adding them into an address book, which then mixed in with quick search results from my personal address book in most email programs. I had to cook up and fill in attendance sheets, then remember to bring a pen/pencil to mark them up and reprint or modify them each time a student added or dropped. To grade at the end of the semester, I spent hours constructing Excel spreadsheets and formulas and then inputting data from handwritten score tables and attendance sheets. If a student asked for their grade in the course "at this point in the semester," I would have to tell them to wait for an email from me after class and then go calculate their grade. For media presentations in class, I had to cart around my full laptop—h.e.a.v.y. and slow to wake/sleep/boot, creating uncomfortable 10-15 second delays that interrupt lecture flow, followed by time spent opening files, etc.
All of this is replaced by one lightweight device in the iPad. A gradebook app has all of my courses, each with a roster, a list of assignments and their weights and due dates, and all of the email addresses for every student. I carry the iPad to class. If I need to make a presentation, I plug the iPad straight into the media system. I take attendance with a few taps—the roster is automatically built for each day and I just tap a here, not here, or late for each student. The lesson plan and notes are also in the iPad, as are the PDF readings, with any electronic highlights that I've added on the iPad. When assignments or exams are graded, I simply enter grades with a couple of taps for each student as I work through them; grades are automatically and continuously updated. If I want to email a student, I simply tap on their name. I can mail assignment sheets, PDF readings, grade summaries, whatever. If I want to email a bunch of students, I just tap a button in the course and email the whole class. I can do everything related to my job—prepare for class, make notes, assemble/do/markup readings, show presentations, track attendance, communicate with students, calculate grades, send announcements, etc.—from a single, lightweight device that I can hold in my hand as I stand in front of a class just as I would once have held stapled pack of typed notes. And I can do it all while recording my lectures in the background with the same device, for later download and reference.
It has made my life so much easier and saved me so much time and organizational headache I'd pay three times as much to have the capabilities. But there are no similar teaching apps on Android, nor are the PDF reading options anything like many for iPad that do annotations, multi-color highlighting, filing, etc.
So I'd respond to you by saying (1) it's definitely not a fashion accessory for me, it gets more mileage than my laptop by far, and (2) it's a matter of the marriage of the user interface properties of the device (very light, simple touch interface, long battery life) to the availability of well-developed, highly specialized applications of which there are many in the App Store.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'll toss in the notion that a lot of people I talked to were almost sold on some of the Android tablets out, and were about to make a purchase when Google came out and said Honeycomb would require a multi-core processor. That slammed the brakes on for them. The general sense I am getting right now is that people are looking for something similar to what they had thought they were going to buy but has honeycomb on-board. As of right now the general murmur I'm hearing is LG's slate and new version of Samsung's Galaxy Tab. While there are certainly a number of reasons these could still end up flopping. Given that people aren't going on spending sprees right now, I think the current lineup of slates is being viewed as filler and won't be touched until these two devices are out and can be compared.
While there is a number of mentions of the Xoom, in general, there seems to be a plague treatment of it going on. For some people it's the fact that it's on Verizon, others are it's lackluster designs, and other potential failings. Suffice to say most people are who are contemplating getting an Android are looking at it as a pale comparison to the promise of the Slate or Tab and are going to hold off. Frankly, I think this market is a bit more discerning then the one for phones and I think that coupled with people's current financial cautionary activity is what's mostly being reflected in buy in.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
The iPad is not a great product, nor are any of the other tablets out there. TFA claims that the iPad is so good that none of the Android tablets can compare. That is wrong.
The real problem is the version of tablet form factor made popular by the iPad. It is just plain useless. The iPad can get away with it because Apple made it a fashion assessory, but Android tablets aren't fashion assessorys. People actually expect them to be useful, but they aren't, so no one wants one. I have read that most people who bought an iPad set it aside after just a few months and then almost never use it again.
Now, I know that someone will try to use the fact that the iPad 2 sold well as proof that I am wrong. The iPad 2 sold well to people who hadn't bought an iPad already, and to those who convinced them selves that there was something resolved in the second generation model that would make them want to use it more than the original. Sure there are a few people who continue to use it for longer, but only because they think it makes them seem cool. Everyone else uses a laptop when they want to get something done or a smartphone when a laptop isn't convenient.
Tablets have historically been data input devices. They were until recently almost always bundled with a stylus. These new media consumption tablets are a fad which will die away eventually. Only Apple will make any money on them because fads are Apple's game.
Android was able to succeed in smartphone space because smartphones are actually useful. Very few people bought Android phones as a fashion assessory.
The iPad breached expectations by actually being successful. Tablets have been around for ages now. There have been dozens of the things. So far one of them has succeeded.
Why did it succeed? I have no idea. But expecting another tablet to succeed because it's vaguely similar isn't going to work. Sony had a tablet PC 10 years ago. There have been various tablet versions of Windows for a while now. Apple appears to have done the same but must have done something different. The question is, what?
In the phone section, you have this one phone which costs approximately 7k SEK while there are no android phones past 4500 SEK.
Not sure how it looks in other countries, but that price different is BIG, especially sine there are well-functioning android phones for less then 2000 SEK on the market.
So, yeah, people come into a store wanting an iphone, look at the price tags and decide it's not really worth it when you can get basically the same thing for 1/3 of the price.
Tablets on the other hand.
They are as expensive or more so in many cases, or they lack features which actually matter on such a large device, people buying it will want true function for it, a phone is something which you need and the extra features are just gravy, a tablet is gravy, so you need to justify the reason that you are buying it somehow.
Also, Apple is good at making people feel like they are getting a luxury item when they buy their decent stuff that's packaged well and looks nice.
Since a tablet is inherently a luxury item, it's a fight on apples turf.
So, yeah, why would android win?
It has nothing to compete with for the moment.
Not again. Not another asshole claiming that some feature of the iPad's tepid contribution to the computing industry is due to some sort of magical goddam sauce that Steve Jobs poured all over it. I can't take it anymore. It always happens like this: some article purporting to be a serious look at the tablet phenomenon follows a torturous path that leads to some variant of "the iPad changed everything with its magical magic." There was a similar article around the time the iPad came out about its inability to run multiple apps and lack of Flash.
I have used an iPad, as well as other tablets, I admit, they are fun. There's something ticklish about the high response of the touch screen and the high functioning, high portability of it all. But the fact remains that NOTHING. NEW. IS GODDAM. HAPPENING IN THERE. I am going to use it to do the exact same things I do on any other platform. I am going to check email, type things, look at shapes in specific patterns that make me feel things. There really, really REALLY is nothing I can do on a iPad that I cannot do on a netbook, or for that matter any other computer. Touch screens are not suitable for doing anything other than web browsing, and anyone who claims that the keyboard is not the most efficient and powerful way to interact with a computer is probably challenged in some way.
You can just hear the sneering, techier-than-thou derision when the article writer describes Android (and conventional computer users) as people who think of computing as "same old same old." As if realizing that whatever hunk of plastic you carry around, you will get the same exact thing with a slightly different flavor is somehow horribly naive, because it represents a failure to accept the irreversibly altered paradigm of using a computer. I would certainly agree that the dressing up apple does of its particlar brand of aluminum slag gives it the edge, but don't act like computing is being done "differently" because people can watch porn on the bus.
The tablet certainly changed the market for consumer electronics, and the computing industry has crowded around this newfound source of cash and market penetration like hungry carp. But the tablet is a brilliant piece of business, not of technology. People who use a tablet are not on the bleeding edge of technology because they bought a dedicated device for fucking around on the internet, they're just a demographic who have only recently been exploited effectively. This whole rude-business-cunning-mistaken-for-innovative-genius thing is starting to give me a goddam headache.
its because noone NEEDS a tablet. You buy an iPad because you're a cock and you want other people to know it
+1 retarded
The kind of people who like to buy Android phones are also the sorts of people who like WinTel machines. They're not going to buy a tablet with Android on it, because it's useless for general computing. Sure you can play Angry Birds on it, play with your fart machine, and read some ebooks, but that's about it. You're dealing with power user customers, these are people who want to mod their phones and take control of their lives. An Android tablet or Ipad takes their power and diminishes it. However, an Android phone on the other hand gives them unprecedented power over their phone, where there was none before. It's unfortunate that my comment will be buried. Maybe one day someone will read this, hopefully, in the archive.
I wonder if the iPhone and Android buyers simply aren't very different people.
And I can only look to myself and the people around me for that but lets see. I have an Android phone (Nexus S), I know people that got an N900 (Nokia linux phone) and some iPhone users.
The iPhone users, some have iPads. Me and the N900 users have NO tablet, iPad or otherwise. Why?
I got a net book for my mobile computing needs (Yes, with linux) and the N900 users got it on their phone. I didn't buy the N900 myself because while it is an awesome piece of hardware I already have a netbook. So what would be the point.
Neither do I have a need for a tablet. I watch movies on my netbook straight from the net in whatever codec and container some anime freak has decided to use for this weeks release. A tablet would have to offer a real advantage to the full flexibility of a my overpowered netbook (8gig ram, fastest SSD available on the market) that can do blu-ray encodes encoded by a drunk encoder. The iPad? Fail city. Sorry but I need flac and xvid and god knows what else because I am used to it.
Doesn't mean the iPad is useless to others but I have notice that the people that have iPads tend to have LARGE laptops. Macbooks often, not properly outfitted with real software but just the standard stuff. So, they got to choose, do I watch only vids that work on it on a very large machine that can easily play them but is unwieldy or do I watch it on the iPad?
Different market, different expectations, different starting position. I would never again buy a big laptop. My needs are met by my phone (which is barely used as a computing device, more as an information terminal, I consume information on it I need right now), my netbook and my PC.
I am a gadget freak, got a PSP and all the gameboys, yes even the 3D (nice effect pity the games are so expensive) but right now I just can justify a tablet. And that is from a guy for who "I want it" is a perfectly just justification.
What I could really use is a tablet that has a real keyboard and a NON-shiny screen. A screen that is perfectly visible in direct sunlight would be a killer feature. But the tablets I seen are closer to mirrors.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The ONLY Android is doing any business in the cell phone market is because Apple will not farm out iOS period. If Apple gave awat iOS to ever every handset maker on the plant Android would wither and die in very short order. Why? Because Android is being morfed and fucked with by every phone vendor there is and across vendors there is no consistency in user interface or standard application set, it is just a mashup of whatever fucktard marketing moron thinks they can make money with. As another poster mentioned the iPhone is currently outselling ever single vendors smart phone and its numbers are nothing more then that.
The iPad.. Toy? I think not. They are being field tested at hospitals all over the place and in other business sectors far and wide and soon you will go into to see your physician and he or she will have an iPad in their hands. Why, because it has a consistent, well designed, well thought out user interface and a standard set of applications AND it can be locked down to keep the rank and file from fucking them up by downloading every app on the planet. I have seen a couple of test units. Full medical charting, view the x-rays on the fly. No more running to a room with a desktop machine, just pull the "films" up, zoom in,zoom out and look at the detail complete with notations of the Radiologists. They do the heavy typing in their office with a BT keyboard.
Bond trader gets all the data they need on the iPad and can execute trades while sitting at lunch,
As much as every geek wants to be able to make it into their own vision of what a tablet / pad computer should be Apple has already done that for the masses. While you might have more fun, be able to run shell scripts and fucking vi on an Android based tablet none them will ever come close to the polished product that is the iPhone and the iPad.
I am not a fanboy and I only own an Apple phone, so just call it like I see it, and although you may not agree with my assessment, the proof will be in the pudding as they say.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The Ipad is more competitively priced, has access to a better marketplace (in terms of content) and looks nice. About the only place an Android tablet may compete is on price but even then it won't be by as much as Android phones vs iphone.
Tablets aren't big enough for everyone including trailer trash to be wanting one so consumer standards are still higher. Plus with smart phones you had about a zillion android phones of varying prices against one 1 iphone. That's not the case with tablets.
And I suspect it will be stillborn, because Asus' PR dept does know how to do its job. $400 and good reviews? I think the Eee Pad will be the benchmark for Honeycomb.
I am so tired of the quality of writing in the press and its need for winners and losers. If there was a word I could erase from the English language it would be the now tired word Fanboy.
I don't feel any particular need to use one product or the other based upon the market penetration or profitability. I only care if the device fits my needs and is useful. Does it really matter if Android or iOS is 99% of the market?
As an aside, I love the continual fluid breakdown of the market into arbitrary groupings depending on the writers affiliation. Sometimes they compare one vendor against all other vendors, device vs. platform, regional or market segment comparisons. I generally feel the whole subject is being over reported. What I take away from the whole Android vs. iOS discussion is that they are both doing quite well right now. In the meantime, Dear Blogosphere, feel free to update us six months from now.
I suspect Apple will not win the tablet war, just like the phone and the O/S war. They're certainly an important player - but I suspect they will not be dominant. Apple have a few flaws that always hold them back
- extreme arrogance
- closed mindedness
While I like the iPhone hardware (except antennagate, which is real), iTunes is abysmal. The "lockdown" that Apple insists on combined with iTunes makes the iPhone very difficult to manage - unless you do everything Apple's way.
Once the hardware and O/S for Android tablets is improved, the marketshare will shift significantly. Apple will never let go of iTunes or its draconian policies - and will lose market share accordingly.
AC
I could be wrong, having not used Android, but isn't it just a scientific calculator? If you type "0.0634+0.113 sin", it's waiting for the argument to pass in to sin, so "0.0634+0.113 sin 30". All the physical scientific calculators I've seen behave the same way, so they can handle operator precedence correctly, unlike your "normal" desktop calculator.
Why o why does Google NOT get it?
Just grab an ipad, touch it, drag it. It's the latency - the response time between touching the screen and seeing things happen, which give the feeling that the user interface actually sticks to your fingers, which gives the 'snappy' feeling of being in control, which is the major reason the iPad rules the block.
Well, it might be more. It's the most light device and with a big enough screen. It serves as a second or third screen in the living room/bed room. For when you watch a movie on the projector and play a game on the laptop, but need to look something up quickly, or want to control your home lighting/shaders. And to bring occasionally with you on a trip where you would otherwise take your laptop; yet only to view a movie, play a game or surf a bit... or for the wife or a friend while you work on your laptop.
I can't resist to wonder if Google took the VERY SMALL effort to compile their patched Linux kernels as being a PREEMPTIBLE KERNEL (Low latency desktop). It doesn't look nor feel as such.
But hey, maybe their patches are so bad that they might not even be SMP safe and without proper locking a PREEMPTIBLE KERNEL just is very buggy. Not so for the mailine kernel. But Google insisted in forking the kernel. Just another mistake, maybe copied from the Red Hat backport failures?
In any case. Honeycomb is just not good enough. Slow in reaction time, too much complexity in settings, they are bulky and heavy devices with often too small screens; they just don't make the product 'sexy' enough to be bought by people who justs buy it out of luxury.
Yet it has strong pluses which are a true benefit compared to the iPad:
1) Linux based
2) Fully customizable (if we can get to see the source code, NOW PLEASE!)
3) Applications in the (industrial) Embedded Linux world
4) Runs Flash
A number of my colleagues (and one relative) have purchased an Android phone, but didn't want a smart phone. They use it as an ordinary (dumb) mobile phone that handles calls and texts, but nothing more. Why did they buy a 'smart' phone? Because they were offered one by phone salespeople at the same rate as a regular phone. When I last spoke to my relative with an Android phone, I was a bit disappointed to find they were completely nonplussed about the 'smart' features. In fact, they went back to the phone store and asked for the all Internet access to be disabled because they had received a warning that the data allowance has been used up after a week. They had no idea what data had been accessed because they only use it to make calls, and have no intention of doing otherwise in future.
I wonder how many others are in the same category? How many of those Android sales are really entrants in the smart-phone market, and how many are just being flogged at next to nothing in place of regular phones (probably in the hope that they might grow into using the other features)?
Motorola just posted a $89 million loss for Q1. However, they sold a good bit of Xooms: 250,000 to be precise (recall that some estates predicted they would sell less than 15,000 of the devices). http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=14488
I love my Xoom. For any web-based app, Google app or Outlook access, it blows away the iPad2 when I run them side by side.
High end buyers that don't hate Apple **already** have an iPad.
Everyone else either has a laptop or a smartphone. Why would they want to spend $500 for another almost-laptop?
For myself, I've had a 4.5" tablet for 3+ years. It was $220 in early 2008. I still use that tablet running Maemo, but I'm looking for an upgrade that does everything it does for the same price. I can justify $220, but not $260. The thing still works.
What I want:
- User swappable battery; 8 hrs of life for normal use (non-video)
- User swappable SDHC memory
- 5-7" screen 800x480
- Authentication (voice would be cool)
- Encrypted storage for everything
- Bluetooth connections for a keyboard, headset, etc - don't under estimate how important a keyboard is folks. When traveling with just a tablet, a hardware keyboard is necessary for typing email.
- Email app that supports SSL, x.509 and GPG certs
- GPS and app (Maemo-mapper is fine); free maps
- VoIP/SIP client (Skype would be nice additionally)
- A few logic-based games (Suduku, Tetris, etc)
- WiFi (speed doesn't matter)
- No cell plan demanded - I don't want any monthly bill.
- Shell access - I use xterms every day
- Real file system
- Built-in Backups
- All the common tools (rsync, python, php, ruby, perl, bash scripting, mplayer, etc.) including remote access via sshd
- Qt GUI compatibility - lots of portable apps are written with Qt
- Nice audio player - Youamp for music and Panucci for podcasts
- Enough graphics power to watch a 720p movie (2 on a single charge)
- User control over OS APIs for each application. Think SE-Linux. Users should be able to easily block/unblock access to any major API (GPS, file system access) for apps.
- No forced desktop OS. When connected, the storage should look like a flash disk (fat32 unless the user uses encryption or hacked EXT3/EXT4/btrfs themselves).
- Voice control - why aren't we controlling our PCs with voice commands yet?
Simple.
I own a tablet, netbook, powerful laptop, multiple desktops and servers. I don't want a $500 tablet. My "gadget quota" is already filled.
If you go into a clothes shop and see a heavily marketed, good brand designer-label shirt for $50 and a shirt from a lesser brand that is almost as nice for $30 then a lot of people are going to choose the $30 one. That's the usual situation with Apple* vs. Brand X when it comes to laptops, music players and phones. Feel free to debate how much Apple deserves its reputation on the basis of functionality and build quality, but if you can't see that Apple is top of the class when it comes to aesthetics and marketing then you're the one with the reality distortion field.
However - if you go into the shop and find the designer shirt for $49.99 and the no-name one for $49.95 and, on closer examination, the differences are, at most, swings and roundabouts, then most people will buy the designer shirt. That's the current state of play with tablets (and that's being fairly generous to the current crop of non-Apple tablets w.r.t. features not working yet, lower res/bad aspect ratio screens, size, weight, battery life). The only reason for getting the "inferior" brand is if you have some objection in principle to the premium brand - and that's just not an issue with the majority of non-slashdotting customers.
So why aren't Androids cheaper? Have Apple broken the habit of a lifetime and sold the iPad for an unbeatable price (flap, oink!)? I suspect that Android tablets are being sold using the phone pricing model: inflate the RRP to entice people to get their phone on contract from a carrier (contract-free phones always look overpriced to me c.f. other mobile electronics) - this works for phones which are useless without a contract - may not work for tablets which work perfectly well with WiFi hotspots.
(* the "Apple Tax" is overstated by haters who cherry-pick which specs they are going to compare and don't place any value on size, weight and industrial design - but you have to stand on your head and squint - e.g. by comparing MacBooks with Sony Vaios - to make it go away).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Bad example. All that means is that Android is emulating a newer style of calculator with alphanumeric display and pseudo-algebraic notation. I have two calculators (one TI and one Casio) that would work in the same way. If it was the nerds' fault, you'd have to type ".0634 .113 + SIN ENTER".
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I love this whole discussion of Apple "winning" the tablet market or "losing" the smartphone market (or flip it for Android if you prefer this comment from that point of view). It's one of the dumbest choice of words for a discussion I've ever seen because it is utterly inaccurate. To put it simply, if Apple is "losing" any battle for smartphones, then I want to be a loser like Apple. They sell the most popular smartphone, by a country mile; they are the most profitable technology company in the world, by an enormous margin; they are one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, thanks to the many factors, first and foremost among them being the iPhone. If that's any sort of measure of "losing" then I'd be happy to "lose" like that.
Of course, the same can be said, in different way, about Android.
Here's the deal - the two companies are conducting business with different measurements of success. While both, in the grand scheme, are after profit (they're corporations, after all), in the specific sense, iOS and iPhone (Apple) is after profit while Android (Google) is after market (in an effort to help Google secure its search dominance). So long as each platform is accomplishing those goals, they are both winning.
More importantly (and here's the best part), since they are both measuring their success by different metrics, if both are winning (as I believe they both are), neither is losing (as I believe both are not) and, best of all, consumers are the ultimate winners. With Google's efforts to expand their market, they're making Android pretty slick, forcing Apple to keep pace with iOS while Android headset/tablet makers are pushing the boundaries with hardware, similarly forcing Apple to keep pace with their iPhone. And the reverse is true, forcing Google and Android headset/tablet makers to excel. Consumers are winning with a wonderful selection of both software and hardware all the while Apple is bringing in record profits while Google is expanding their market presence thereby protecting Google as a search engine.
There's a whole lot of winning going on and I see very little losing anywhere except when you add RIM, Microsoft, or Nokia to the discussion...
But are you really going to sit there with a tablet on your lap and enter credit card details every time you want to buy a non-free App?
I don't do that now with desktop PCs.
Just so that we're on the same page, how do you prefer to buy software for a desktop PC?
What about updates? you then have to navigate to every web site you have an app for and check for an update.
I don't do that now with desktop PCs.
Microsoft Update updates only Microsoft applications. What process updates non-Microsoft applications on your desktop PC?
the Jit itself introduces a perceptible lag.
There's JIT lag for native code too when the hardware manufacturer changes the platform from one instruction set to another. The 68LC040 emulator in Mac OS 7/PowerPC was so slow that people bought a third-party replacement JIT (Connectix Speed Doubler) to speed things up. Rosetta (PowerPC emulator for Mac OS/x86) also introduces overhead. And when Android/x86 tablets land, they'll need a JIT to run the many applications that use ARM NDK modules.
Resistive touch screens offer a plurality of advantages over capacitive touch screens. (The reverse is also true).
I agree, and I'd like to offer a few concrete examples. I ordinarily use my Archos 43, an Android-based PDA, with the stylus that I used to use with my Nintendo DS Lite. While trying free applications from the three markets I have installed, I noticed a few advantages of the precision that the combination of a resistive touch screen and a stylus offers: can use smaller font sizes in editable text fields (e.g. ColorNote), can use the keyboard accurately when the device is held vertically, can use drawing applications, etc. But I also noticed a few disadvantages. A few applications have no way to zoom the view because they rely on pinching gestures. And a lot of video games (e.g. Cordy) have on-screen directional pads and fire buttons in the bottom corners; with a resistive screen, only one button responds at once.
RIM has recently patented a hybrid resistive/capacitive touch screen
Which means we'll have to wait 20 years to see them on any device that runs anything but BlackBerry OS, such as the Android tablets mentioned in the article.
The competition doesn't have that Apple marketing magic, they offer more product quite often, but they just don't have that Apple shine and since most consumers are morons shiny objects rule.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There are thousands of iPad apps in the app store. The android market has less than 100.
less than 100 apps in the android app store? you didnt look very far...
I think by "iPad apps", grandparent meant applications that specifically target the tablet form factor as opposed to the phone form factor. Where a phone application would have a list of messages on the full screen, then an individual message on the full screen, a tablet application might have them side-by-side using Honeycomb's new "fragments" API. Because there are so few Honeycomb tablets in the public's hands, there are fewer than 100 applications that specifically target Honeycomb tablets.
Then another depends on another application because it doesn't make sense outside that context, and thus states so. (on a sidenote in this case often the application will just ask you to download to the other if you wish to use the feature).
Ideally, if application A depends on application B, one of the following scenarios should occur:
I'm not specifically talking about games here, because I still don't think that's the main use of a device
Apple has even marketed iPod touch as a PSP replacement. From this page: "iPod touch is the most popular portable game player in the world. And with tens of thousands of games and other applications in almost every category just a tap away at the App Store, iPod touch has more games than any other platform." Other than the iDevices, which handheld device 1. is specifically for games and 2. allows individuals and small businesses to develop for it?
Phones are (in our current society) a Commodity; everyone "needs" a phone.
Everyone needs a phone != everyone needs a cell phone. Being able to make calls while away from home or the office is a luxury. A lot of people get along just fine with a POTS land line.
Everyone needs a cell phone != everyone needs a contract phone. A lot of people make so few calls while away from home that they get along just fine with prepaid voice-only service for less than $100 per year, such as Virgin Mobile USA's rates as low as $15 + tax per 90 days. (This rate is offered only to Virgin Mobile USA customers who use automatic top-up.)
Now how is a mobile, contract, smart phone a necessity and not a luxury?
The only Android tablet you can get right now is the Motorola Xoom on Verizon. It won't work anywhere but the US, it's overpriced, and it's from Motorola (yuck). (The Galaxy Tab doesn't run tablet software; it's a big smartphone, and pretty successful at that.)
Wait a year until HTC, Samsung, and others have started shipping tablets and Android tablets will catch up quickly.
I don't see the future of tablets. The future is really in docking stations--for portable pcs like smartphones. A tablet is just a touchscreen docking station with an android or ios core clipped in. Home PCs should also go away and make room for a monitor with an android/ios docking port and some usb/firewire ports for keyboard and mouse. Everyone should just carry their PC around on their belt or in their pocket or purse.
Then we can start talking about self-hosted cloud storage.
There are several more tabs out now with market, and all those coming in the next few months have the market.
And Asus's Transformer has a better screen than that the IPad, and is cheaper.
And you are the one who should remove your head from your ass. They are selling around 10 million Android phones a month at the moment and still going up. All of those people are going to ask if their phone apps work on their tablet - and the answer is only going to be "yes" if they get Android.
And comparing Ipad with Android is like comparing apples to spaceships - the IPad is one product from one company. Android is a free operating system tablets from a multitude of companies every expanding. And money matters, you can get really cheap Android tablets from Asia already - sure they are clearly of bad quality - but whilst everybody might want to own a Bugatti Veyron but most can afford a Ford Fiesta, there is a market for less than sterling quality.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Immature rubbish, its not the same people saying it - its just you trolling.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I tried voting this article down in the firehose, esp. because it was obviously written by an Apple Fanboi. Unfortunately, the Apple Fanbois here on slashdot must have really high expectations of Google if they think they can kill the iPad in a week. I don't blame them tho; look at what Android phones are doing to iPhone sales. I *am* glad when they point out weakenesses, tho; all the better to find out what needs fixing and make the next version better :)
Nathan's blog
(All that said, the Air is definitely lighter and would be tempting if there was an option for a matte screen. I don't buy computers in order to stare at my own face.)
I remember when laptops first starting moving to glossy screens. I asked my optics professor "glossy or matte?"
He said with a glossy screen at least he has the option of adjusting the angle so he doesn't get glare, whereas a matte screen will have glare no matter what the angle.
His answer is the obvious one once you think about it... and you'll never go back to matte screens. Matte screens produce a lot of diffuse glare as well as diffuse the screen image so that the screen has less contrast and brightness to deal with reflections that are there.
If you want less reflections, matte isn't the way to do it... add a AR coating.
android tablets cost more and deliver less. that's all there is to it
Early adopters have only had iPads for approx 1 year. Tablets are too expensive, especially as an extra device to replace quickly. Decent Android tablets are new, arguably not practical until 3.0 is genuinely available.
The iPad AppStore has convinced me - my next tablet won't be apple, almost certainly will have to be android - just not yet...
So, if I were to get a tablet, what would I do with it. Here is my list.
a) E-Book reader b) Agenda with alarm mode into which I would write my appointments. (Hopefully, I would be able to share agenda with my business partners). c) Offline email d) Free Cell Solitaire e) Wait for patches and upgrades I go for function, and what I posted is all that I require. Since I am 70+, the larger screen of the tablet would be easier on my eyes than the 1.5 by 1.5 inch cellphone that I purchased for $60.00 and which does all of the above. Oh yes, my Cellphone costs are about $20.00 per month. Do you know what separates the men from the boys? It is the cost of their toys. It also the effectiveness of keeping up with the Jones's.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Part of the problem is that Google controls the Android Marketplace and tablets like the ViewSonic gTablet (running Android 2.2) aren't allowed to register so you can't purchase apps! This is pretty ridiculous and I consider it a 'restraint of trade' but I guess that is the way it is with Google. There ARE other android sites that provide excellent apps and many authors provide on multiple sites, but not many. It is still a new domain for devices and smart phones are leading, but tablets are very convenient, but because of size, not as easy to carry. Not easy to type or run interactive apps as they are not easy to hold and manipulate. There are a lot of difficulties but they are very nice for coffee table accouterments. Nice to have a nice tablet to look up something, add a netflix streaming movie to your que, scan email etc. I've had a ViewSonic for several weeks and it's presentation is great, easy to use, has a few glitches as all new tech does. All in all, not bad to couch surf, surf in bed while the wife watches Leno or something. I don't think they will ever take over from the convenient smart phone or laptop for replacement. Just a nice adjunct.
Skip Stein Free Agent Management Systems Consulting, Inc. http://www.msc-inc.net www.linkedin.com/in/skipstein
I wonder why no one here, nor googling, is talking about why on earth is not OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice being ported for Android platform ! I have a nokia n900 phone and via a debian chroot I am able to run OpenOffice. Ok it is not smooth, but for these new devices it should be fair enough. So why no one is porting OOo to Android platform as that would be a major benefit from it to IOS ! And (I am IT manager at my company) an argument for me to propose Honeycomb to commercial guys !
I think it's ridiculous to say that since Apple is making huge profits on their systems now that they can keep it up once the market is fully saturated with tablets (I know, theres tons of cheap knockoffs now, and a host of workable android tabs, but they mostly all suck @ price per performance atm, which is all I care about). It's never smart to invest in 1st gen/ 2nd gen technology, as if you wait a few years before entering the market, as you get the most of price/performance then. Fanboys keep saying how iPads outshadow everything else in the market in terms of sales and market share, which is true now. But wait a year or two, once the market is completely saturated with competent tablets (if the form factor stays in popularity that long), someone will put out an Android tablet in the $300-$500 range that will put the iPads to shame, and Apple will really have to show us the money and keep innovating. Apple products are currently for people with gadget envy & superiority complexes, or with tons of money to throw away for little functionality improvements in my opinion. They really are netbook like toys (with a huge app market) when it comes down to it. Apple products always have been expensive toys, considering you can do everything (technically, not including the app market of course, but who cares imo) on a PC you can on an Apple for 1/3 the price. (PC Hardware has always been 1-3 steps ahead of apple and now Apple is running on x86 anyway to even try to be a competitor). To be honest, the only genuine use for a tablet for me is WiFi, light web browsing and PDF viewing, editing, & sig-cap for work, & the ability to plug in a real keyboard (and a serial, or usb port with drivers for a usb->serial) is a huge incentive, everything else is done better on a laptop or phone. Offer me a combination of all 3 devices (laptop, tablet, phone) and maybe there will be real reason to spend >$300. I know, skype on 3g/4g, etc etc, not interested in your lowly capped plans tho. The CPU/GPU processing power in tablets is simply not there yet, but it will be soon with the market its achieving.. And for MUCH cheaper when the market is more than 3million people with money to blow =] How big is the laptop market? Just wait, once it includes enterprise (that's smart enough to wait until the Apple hysteria dies down and serious competitors arise like Dell/HP/etc 3rd gen+)
The iPhone and Android phones landed on a market which were hungry for their products. Any tech geek could immediately realize the potential of a media-capable handheld computer with a slick UI and internet access.
Of course there are many interesting uses for the iPad, but it's essentially a recreational toy. There aren't many productive uses for the device. So they're relying very much on the brand and novelty apps to shift hardware.
It's not so much that people are deciding between Android and iPad, it's that Apple have convinced people that they need an iPad. That's the genius of marketing.
1. Cannot use Skype video conferencing. Why Skype? Because it has widest adoption rate, and most desktop / laptops can use it (win/mac/lin). Fring had support for it, but no longer, and there's no talk of this from Skype at all.
2. Cannot play Netflix. Netflix has most selection of videos, and if it can't stream Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t to show to irrational minds, well, it's just no good. Netflix probably won't support Linux based platform such as Android any time soon, if ever. See their press release on this matter.
3. Cannot (or difficult to setup) stream video from SMB share on local network. All win/lin/mac can do it, as well as iOS with $4 app. Android must be rooted blah blah.
4. Capacitive touch screen under $200. Very few like that in the market (maybe one?), and they all have very poor reviews. Ipodtouch is about $200.
If these things are fixed, I'm getting an Android today. But it's not likely any time soon.