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Sluggish Android Tablet Growth May Give Microsoft an Opening
theodp writes "In NASCAR, you can finish a race in the Top 3 by leading the whole way or by having spectacular crashes take out those ahead of you. The same may hold true for the tablet race, where Apple has led the whole way, but Microsoft could advance into 2nd or 3rd place as those once ahead of it crash and burn. 'Microsoft tablets based on Windows 8 won't be ready until next year,' notes SplatF's Dan Frommer. 'Unexpectedly, that might not be too late to matter.' Far-fetched as it may seem, Ars Technica's Peter Bright explains why the Windows 8 tablet invasion might work."
Could we see something similar in 2012 between 'Jean Girard' Jobs and 'Ricky Bobby' Ballmer?
No. 2012 is not the year that the final decision on tablets will be made. Just a little insight for ya', but Android is not going to sit idly by and wait a few years before finding and growing their niche in the tablet market. That kind of strategy may work for companies that think they can't fail because they have a large enough war chest to survive a war of competitive attrition, but Android isn't a sloth-like, relatively static codebase that's hoping others die before stepping in. And let's not forget that given another year Apple will have their next iPad on the market (and who knows what else). Apple is trying to create dependancies between its phone, tablet and entertainment products much the same way that MS made Windows + Office a dominant combination. Until MS can enter the market with strong ties and motivation for users to buy multiple MS phones, tablets and other entertainment products they will not be "racing to the finish line" with Apple, Android and whoever else jumps into the marketplace.
Even Microsofties are now saying "Wait for the unified world of WP8".
In the meantime, Apple continues to sell every tablet they can make, no discounting.
And Android smartphones outsell everyone else.
The "Unified world" will be a divided one - Android smartphones and tablets, and Apple smartphones and tablets. There is no room for a #3 (just like on the desktop, or we would have had a "year of the linux desktop" already) unless you consider < 1% to be "success".
That is, previous MS entries into the tablet realm have failed largely because tablet support was added to Windows as an after thought. MS tablet users had to use the Windows paradigm with support for a touch screen, stylus, handwriting recognition, etc. bolted on after the fact. This made for a crappy user experience. Palm and Apple both understood from the get go with their Palm Pilot and Newton lines that took the tablet paradigm as being central to the user interface. Android and iOS maintain that paradigm.
It's possible that MS might finally get it with Windows 8. Their future success or failure will depend on this far more so than any of the other factors that TFA bring up.
The rest of the article was mostly dreck that seems to assume that most tablet and PC users are power users.
Yes, they do differ - Android has all the strengths and WP7 has all the weaknesses
(Seriously, no multi-tasking? No programs can run in the background and notify the user when something happens? "Tiles" are laughable replacements for notification icons)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
FIRE SALE! $99 for the 16gb model, and $149 for the 32gb model. I guess HP finally found a way to sell them.
Really? HP's website says that they're "Out of Stock" and I haven't found any retailers or online stores actually selling them for $100/$150.
If it was better for games and not from Apple then I'm all for it.
Though if it's simple games I don't see why they shouldn't be web apps.
If they are complicated with advanced graphics and such then I could see how Microsoft could one-up especially Android.
And you ignore the benefit of having advertising in your app and hence making money like that.
Not everyone's dream is to be a conduit for advertising, and not everyone wants an ad-supported product. In fact, most devs just want to do development, and plenty of people are willing to pay for an ad-free product.
It's unreasonable to ask that devs do more work, open their app UI to a third party *and* waste their users bandwidth simply because they aren't allowed to sell the naked app as it is.
IOW, Google shouldn't be putting up hurdles for no good reason. FWIW, I'd prefer Android development over any of the competition, but why bother if the other platform lets me sell the app but the android platform forces me to give it away and hope that annoying the user with advertisements would make me money.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
"In NASCAR, you can finish a race in the Top 3 by leading the whole way or by having spectacular crashes take out those ahead of you
Of course in NASCAR, unless you are there at the start of the race, you aren't even in the race, regardless of how fast your car is, regardless of how skilled your driver is and regardless of how many people crash.
I never see people sitting outdoors using them. I never see people using them while eating lunch or drinking coffee. I never see people using them at my workplace. I never see people using them at the offices of the other companies I visit.
Just guessing, but is braille a significant part of your life?
Thinkpad Tablet case connector is standard USB, so you can plug any keyboard if you do not have the case near you for some reason
Here's how new sales currently break down:
Android: 48%
IOS: 19%
RIM: Who cares any more? We just want to know who's going to buy them.
WebOS: Oops!
WP7: Rounding error.
Android is getting over half a million activations a day, and that number is increasing by 5.5% every month. You might consider it a bad thing, but people must like the wide choice of Android devices available if they're snapping them up in such volume.