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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
>"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...
*snort* No one considers the Air a netbook. If netbooks are famous for anything, it's cheap and small. The Air is certainly thin, and minimal on storage and connections, but it's not small or cheap. It's only competitors are regular Macs with gold plated hinges and a rose colored filter for the camera.
Infuriate left and right
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.
Last time I compared the 11" Air to Dell's popular 10" netbooks (a few months ago), it was actually lighter and smaller in most dimensions (just a bit wider, significantly thinner, and a bit less deep), plus it was more powerful, had better battery life, a full-size keyboard, and a larger screen. Yes, the Air cost 2.5x as much, but you do get a lot out of it, including the same small size and ultraportability of a netbook (at least compared to the 10" variety that seem most popular now).
"In its quarterly filing, Microsoft indicated that the consumer PC market was the primary culprit for the decline — pointing in particular to a 40 percent decline in netbook sales in the consumer market. That’s more evidence of the iPad’s impact on the market. Many consumers are opting for the Apple slate rather than Windows-based netbooks to fill the gap between the PC and the phone."
Stick a fork in the netbook, it is done. It's niche has been largely taken over by a combination of the smartphone and the tablet. To blame "fanboys" for 40% market moves is ridiculous to the extreme and not a little trollish.
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