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What HP's TouchPad Fire Sale Teaches iPad Rivals
Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Williams writes that the success of HP's fire sale in unloading hundreds of thousands of TouchPads at heavily discounted prices may provide clues to other Apple competitors hoping to loosen the iPad's stranglehold on the tablet computing market. The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same price point as the iPad but, put together with all the other Android tablets, it's estimated the iPad outsells them eight to one so 'the problem becomes circular: the user base is too small for app developers to invest in,' writes Williams, 'so users buy an iPad because there are more apps and the user base gets even smaller relative to Apple's.' According to Williams, Android tablet makers must find a way of breaking the cycle to avoid the TouchPad's fate. 'No doubt acutely aware of this is Amazon, which is rumored to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn,' writes Williams, adding that Amazon must price their 'iPad killer' at break-even or a loss to succeed. 'Its online retail empire and the Kindle brand mean Amazon has the marketing clout to take on the iPad, but on the evidence of HP's successful TouchPad sell off, the question is whether it has the courage to put its money on the line. '"
Do they really need an in-depth analysis for something that bloody simple?
Yeah sure, you can beat the iPad if you offer similar features and sell it for $100--no shit. How is that in ANY way analogous too offering your pad for $50-$100 cheaper than an iPad? Oooh, let's all run out an buy the Amazon maxiPad because it's $650 instead of the iPad's $700!! Unless you're prepared to absolutely bleed money on every maxiPad sale, you're not going to soak up even a single percentage point of the iPad's market dominance.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And we learn that people really, really, really like a bargain. We don't learn much else.
It's obvious that if you offer a tablet with similar features to an iPad but substantially cheaper, even if it lacks in some areas (such as apps or polish), people will buy it. It doesn't take a genius to realize that. Thats pretty much what's happening with the iPhone and Android phones already. The question that interests me more is whether a worse tablet (worse specs) at a substantially reduced price point will sell well.
Tablet apps are a nice thing to have on Android, especially when they're well done, but they're not all that necessary. Android was designed from the beginning to be able to handle different screen sizes and densities, and, admittedly not without a little pain, it handles it very well. A majority of apps just work on Android tablets. Some apps look sparse on larger screens, and some don't work because they used fixed positioning, but really, most apps don't need to be rewritten for tablets. They are compelling as is. The app gap is a myth.
Duh.
...possible selling the HP tablet so low will help to sell the HP PSG unit and make WebOS more attractive to the potential buyer.
Possible now WebOS has more "potential" value, than when HP was holding it. So, if HP is selling the PSG unit with WebOS, this may help to get more value to that platform..... at the cost of HP loosing money with the touchpad ;)
What Apple's rivals should do is not just learn a lesson. They should leverage the TouchPad. Get Android working on the TouchPad which just sold hundreds of thousands of units, and keep building the Android app userbase.
Apple has had the advantage of leveraging what was originally the iPod consumer base into a mature ecosystem which has turned out to be one of the iPad's main advantages over its would-be rivals. Here's a golden opportunity for Apple's rivals to influence the future purchasing decisions of hundreds of thousands of consumers.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
$600 or $400 is way too much for a tablet. Half that, or less, is plenty to pay. Pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap.
Stop fixating your reviews or articles on Android tablets that are the same price as iPads and let us know what is out there for cheaper ?
I picked up an ASUS Transformer for £100 less than the Motorola Xoom and it has exactly the same spec and OS
Touchscreen, size, color, wireless are important.
Audio, video, GPS, 3G, phone, camera, could be optional. Mobile devices have been evolving into "swiss army knives". But this may not be necessary.
$100 is the right price point for an adequate tablet with Wifi or 3g. At $700, any pad is a bad joke, especially when a netbook is $300 and $150 readers can be rooted and made to function as tablets. $100 seems too low? Remember what laptops used to cost? Manufacturers will just have to get over it. The high margin time window just gets shorter and shorter.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A tablet is a luxury item. I can't justify spending $600 or $800 (or whatever they cost) on a tablet when I can buy a laptop or build my own desktop for something in the $300-400 range.
Selling a product at a loss doesn't help unless you have some other revenue stream.
Console makers get away with it because they license developers. Besides, the production cycle on a console is long enough to actually put them into the black over the long run.
Cellular companies get away with it because customers are locked into a contract, and have to pay a large sum to get out of it.
Tablet makers though? I guess Apple has their app store and other developers can do the same, but most they would have to sell a lot of apps to make up the difference (since most apps are significantly cheaper than most console games, if you're using that model). The service model may work, but I honestly don't know how many people are going to be willing to pay for yet another internet connection. After all, the people who buy tablets are likely already paying for home internet and cellular internet service.
what would you do with a large colorful touchscreen that didn't do "video"?
Like anyone can even know that
at break-even or a loss to succeed
So to "succeed" they need to either make no money or lose money while Apple, even with lower market share, will still command strong sales and great profit margins. That sounds familiar. Oh right, it's just like how Apple has maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the world smart phone market share yet pulls in 2/3 of the profit. Will these people never learn that a race to the bottom and razor thin margins is not the way to run business? Meanwhile, Apple will have strong profits and will be laughing all the way to the bank.
With the exception of Nintendo, most videogame hardware is sold at a lost initially as a way of building the customer base. The idea being that the hardware maker will recoup their investment through game licenses and because their hardware costs will go down over time. While this seems like a plausible model for tablet makers, there are two problems, the first is that Apple has set the expected product lifespan of a tablet at one year, meaning components prices will never get cheaper. Second, the going rate for a tablet app is like one dollar, so there isn't any room to quickly make back money through licensing arrangements. Basically, if a tablet maker wants to get in to the market, they better plan on getting in for the long haul.
Sell it below cost to gain market share while hoping to make it up in volume.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
They have 50% of all the profit in the smartphone industry. They are printing money. How does that equate with getting their clock cleaned?
I saw around three of them being used as E-readers on my last flight.
The actual E-readers outnumbered the tablets though.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I don't mind the articles, but does he work for Slashdot now or just spam the submissions folder cause I've seen numerous stories where he's duplicated what others had already submitted. How is it that his particular submissions continue to be picked for show when there are the same articles submitted by others and before him? Hugh Pickens, who are you that you get such preferred treatment?
News at 11!
Seriously though, all it really shows is that $99 is past the impulse buy threshold for a quality tablet. Duh.
The same pattern keeps appearing. iPhone vs Android a few years ago and then an oddball player called the Pre came along which never drew in a lot of developers and never had the level of apps Android and iPhone enjoy. Pre failed. WebOS was later put on what was priced as essentially a feature phone, the Pixi.
Now, we're playing this game again. iPad vs Honeycomb Tablets and then WebOS appears again. Not a lot of interest, still no developers, still no apps, and HP just decided to call it quits when their forecasts said this thing was going to be another Pre.
In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
Most likely, someone will released some half-assed 2.3 ROM for this tablet and it'll suck. Shame google isn't releasing 3.2 for this thing via a side-channel. Honeycomb really is on par with ipad and makes for incredible experience.
Since you are ignoring all the component and manufacturating costs that it actually takes to make these things--what the hell? why not go all the way.
I personally feel that tablets are just too expensive right now.
They are, basically, smartphones - the phone + a bigger screen. Now I'm not totally dissing this design. There have been times when reading something or wanting to show something to others that I would have loved for my phone to have a bigger screen. However, I already have my phone.
Buying a tablet is an additional cost on top of the phone. It's not like just because I'm willing to pay 200 + contract for a phone I'd be willing to pay the same amount for a tablet, because I actually "need" the phone. I'm not going to decide whether to buy a tablet or a phone, because the phone is much more necessary. Since their functions overlap, the tablet is a completely extra luxury device.
I won't be buying a tablet until they are significantly cheaper (I would have bought a touchpad but I'm broke this month... too bad they didn't liquidate them next month). From what I understand tablets are actually fairly expensive to manufacture, so I'm not expecting the manufacturers to drastically lower the price until they get cheaper to make. So... I don't expect Android tablets to become all that popular until the cost to make them goes down. Let the early adopters pay high amounts so that the price of the tech ends up going down for all of us (just like any other tech).
The reason this doesn't effect Apple is... well do I really have to say it? Apple users are used to overpaying for stuff.
If Andoid manufacturers are worried about not enough Apps existing on their platform, I think the solution is obvious: Give App developers (like me!) free Tablets. I PROMISE to make lots of really nice apps for it.
In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
There is no "natural monopoly" or "natural duopoly" in the OS space. There is monopolistic and anti-competitive actions that make it very hard for 3rd party options to survive. Which is the goal of Apple and MS, since they have the desktop space to themselves and they want the exact same situation in the mobile space. This is not an example of a "natural duopoly" coming to fruition, but rather that HP could not compete on the business end of things.
http://www.suntimes.com/business/6971729-420/tribune-co.-reported-to-be-readying-tablet-distribution
The question isn't whether $500+ for a tablet is feasible in the market--it has been 100% proven that this is a feasible price point because Apple is selling tens of millions of iPads. The question is why can't anyone else replicate what Apple is doing with tablets?
I think part of the problem is that Apple has an even larger headstart on tablets than they had on smartphones. It also seems that the 'ecosystem' is an even more important differentiater for tablets than for smartphones. I expect Android tablets to slowly catch up in terms of hardware/software quality (just like they are slowly catching up in smartphones) and ecosystem (although this ramp is even slower).
The real question is what the next plateau will be; will it be like smartphones where Apple is happy to have 50% of the industry-wide profit (and let everyone else fight over the scraps)?
Seriously this is about the stupidest argument ever heard. Android already can compete with iPad, what are they trying to say. iPad does not have a huge incomprehensible market, they have devout worshipers that purchase as soon as their products come out. Android people are a bit pickier when it comes to buying something, they actually take time to evaluate the products instead of the hipsters who buy a label. There are plenty of apps, games, and utilities for Android tablets, and plenty of well selling tablets out there making a decent profit.
Apple is not the future of mobile technology, in fact Android sells are surpassing them more and more each day. Apple is resorting to lawsuits to slow the competition because they are afraid of loosing. The only competition Amazon has to worry about is other Android makers, because the die hard iPad people are Steve Job worshipers or people that believe articles like these.
I work in a marketing company, the sales team and executives like iPhones and iPads. Most everyone else uses Android with a few people using iPad/iPhones. Yes people near the art industry have been using apple for decades and a few hipsters love Apple, but everyone else is starting to shift away.
No, they don't need an in-depth analysis for that, duh.
What they do need an in-depth analysis for is mainly answering two questions:
1) Is there a way to make enough money off of other stuff to use the hardware as a loss-leader, and if so, how much of a loss-leader can they afford? In Amazon's case, perhaps they can afford to sell the hardware at a substantial discount--yes, perhaps even $99--if, for example, they have an iTunes-like store in which they can make gobs of money to cover the cost of manufacturing the tablets plus make a profit.
2) Are there other advantages in leveraging a very large user base? In Amazon's case, for example, if they have bajillions of Amazon Kindroids out there, maybe content companies (20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony, etc.) would cut really good deals to Amazon on their streaming service license fees.
That second point cannot be overstated enough. Apple frequently uses their market position to dictate to developers and content creators the terms under which their creations will be sold in the App Store, whereas when developers and content creators deal with Amazon, they have a lot more leverage because their market position is quite a bit weaker. If Amazon sold a bunch of Kindroids for a loss of $1 million but were able to negotiate $2 million in savings and/or profits from people who want access to the massive Kindroid user base that creates, that's a win.
Of course, it's also a dangerous game to play. If they sell a crapton of Kindroids but those users don't buy crap in addition to it, they might not be able to leverage their position and they're just out $1 million... Thus the in-depth analysis.
This is the same reason Verizon still exists and, until recently, why people put up with sub-par phones. Simply put, the phones were cheap or free, and people put up with the higher usage costs (say, akin to fewer apps/less usability) because of the diminished up-front cost.
If tablets were to segment as PCs did in the early 90s and offer "cheap" variants (eg. a tablet with 4G of storage and half as much RAM, maybe), maybe with cheaper displays, they would be adopted quite quickly, I think.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It clearly is worth it for millions of people; so that's not the reason that the HP tablet failed.
Every single day. On the long trainride to/from work, in the can, as a quick and dirty hotspot when needed, as a backup for my home internet when the cable goes down, as a halfway decent game platform, watching netflix (until 3.1 broke it...mutter...) to IM back and forth with the wife and kids, handy camera, general internet browsing, reading mail, and reading books and magazines with Kindle and Nook software etc.etc.
It is a form factor that (unlike a laptop) is actually viable to haul around with you just whenever.
--- Mercutio was right.
So I have to ask, does anyone actually use tablets?
Nope, no one. Not a single person.
All the sales numbers are fake, and the devices don't actually exist outside of demo units.
What android needs is an army of fanbois who are as dedicated to android...
You mean Slashdot? ;)
Who win prevail this battle field of Android, Windows phone 7 and Iphone... please answer me http://mettanandabhikkhu.blogspot.com/
Who are as dedicated to android as the apple fanbois are to the shit that apple sells.
Yes, I'm an android fanboi and I don't even own one (yet). I do know that I will NEVER buy an apple product.
So not so much a fan then, more a zealot.
Getting developers to Android tablets isn't just a matter of getting more units out there than iPad. There are already more Android phones out there than iPhones, but there is still more money to be made on the iPhone than on Android. What Android needs to do is get the type of users that are willing to pay for apps. iPhone users pay for apps. Even Rovio didn't want to release Angry Birds on Android because they didn't think enough Android users would be willing to pay for it. Maybe Rovio can afford to support themselves on ad revenue, but the average developer is going to have it much harder.
It makes you just wonder; like it or not; that Android OS would be the #1 smartphone platform (by volume) on the market had the hardware cost not been subsidized by the phone companies giving the iPhone like devices away for next to nothing (e.g. buy one get one). Just look at the two top selling smartphones #1 iPhone 4 #2 iPhone 3GS this past quarter. I think it shows that people buy stuff that works, is supported and like it or not they don't give a rats a$$ about "tinkering"
http://isource.com/2011/08/22/iphone-4-and-iphone-3gs-found-to-be-best-selling-smartphones-in-us/
... but I make up for it in volume.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Fixed that for you.
The customers for iPad don't know about or care about tablets (even if some vendors are deluded into thinking they are the same thing because the specs are comparable).
Lower the price! Lower the damned price. You have to be a boutique item to charge boutique prices, and the Android tablets aren't, yet, and may never be. As long as they try to go toe-to-toe with Apple on profit margins, they're only going to appeal to people who absolutely wouldn't own an Apple product but still need some kind of tablet device. Oh, as they fail one by one they'll come up with a variety of excuses, but the real reason is that the devices are too expensive for what the public perceives them to be.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The tablet market TODAY consists mainly of the IPad for a few reasons. It has been on the market longer, is made by Apple so everyone knows it is cool, and there are more applications available. Other tablets can make inroads into this market by being less expensive, waiting for more applications to be available for their O/S and by supplying features that are wanted & not available with an IPad,
There are tablets that offer keyboards, USB, etc and other goodies not offerred by Apple.
Can't do too much about the Apple coolness, but a mfg could build devices that are solid and feel right.
There are application available for these other tablets that Apple would never permit in their market.
Android is still adding applications of one type or another in great numbers, most of the application types are already available on IPad.
HP major failures were to overprice its tablets and not being patient enough (at least 1 to 2 years) to compete in this market. In addition, HP also tried to use WebOS instead of Android which means that it takes longer for applications to be developed or ported.
I really question the idea that it cost HP $318 to manufacture a tablet when there are android tablets (mostly cheap Chinese knockoffs ) that can be purchased for less than $150 retail. Not saying that these knockoffs have the stuff that it takes, but the cost difference between these and the claimed HP cost is considerable. I think HP overpriced their tablets instead of pricing them at a more reasonable entry point and being patient in the market.
I'm not an Apple fanboi. My iPhone was my first Apple product. I bought an iPad a few years later because when I saw it I thought "Jeebus, that is exactly what a computer should be like!" Then I went to BestBuy, played with it for an hour or so, and found it was better than the advertising made it look. Its built better than ANY laptop I've had in the last few years, its software "just works", and its battery life fits my usage style. Thats why I bought it.
A previous poster noted that many people use it as an excuse to leave thier laptop home. I know I do. Its easy to transport, and with 10+ hours of battery life, I don't have to drag cables. Apple winds because the competition is trying to compete with Apple, not wow me with a better choice. I'm a tech guy, but I don't care about going under the hood. I just want available options (apps), and effortless usage. Apple delivers that, even jailbroken (jailbreaking is ridiculously easy), It still delivers. Android devices? not so much.
Apples are slick european sporty cars. The contenders are thier American competitors.
YMMV
heybiff
Who are as dedicated to android as the apple fanbois are to the shit that apple sells.
Yes, I'm an android fanboi and I don't even own one (yet). I do know that I will NEVER buy an apple product.
Most of the 200 million iOS users weren't Apple customers (or fanbois) before they bought an iPhone/iPad. What Android needs isn't more fanatic Android users, it's more Android users in the first place.
Go to the shop and buy one they have already crammed android 2.2 into one so it is technically possible, how long till a cracked version comes out, not long! check more news about it here
The most critical thing here to realize that when you offer a device, even completely crippled and unsupported, can sell out if the price point is right. $100 is an excellent deal for a tablet capable of running android.
This should tell the manufacturers that if you want more tablet sales you need to dramatically reduce the cost of the devices. Make it a no-brainer. I spend $100 on a hard night of eating and drinking, $600 and i'm spending a lot more time evaluating if i really need it.
Make tablets, but make them cheap and ubiquitous.
Perhaps if HP had made these devices originally $100 they would have sold better.
If you CAN'T make your device cheaper than you're simply doing it wrong. There are and will continue to be a huge number of chinese knockoff tablets completely unlocked, that perform well enough to browse the web. Those are the devices i will continue to suggest to people instead of name brand overpriced junk.
Thats what it means
HP does not care about it and are just dumping inventories and letting their shareholders take the losses, so the CEO can turn HP into his former company SAP. It doesn't make sense to lose money as that goes agaisnt the basic principle of business. Most consumers who think this is the right price for the tablet miss the point. Would you buy it since no apps will exist for it? The internet browser will start to become out of date fast and that is the only thing going for it.
Maybe HP can hire the CEO of Bryers while we are at it and start making Ice Cream? It makes as much sense and just as retarded. You can't walk in and change the company into something they are not. HP tabelts were kind of in the market of consumer electronics. But where they are going now is not HP's speciality as they expect to buy these service companies up and make them HP services and be like IBM lol
It is a shame and I hope Google buys it so we can have some of the technology in Andriod.
http://saveie6.com/
..Welcome the new Foxconn Overlords. All these tablets are being made in the same bloody factory in Shenzhen, right? The one with 450,000 employees?
Gently reply
See them all the time on the NYC subway. A lot of them play Angry Birds, some read articles, some do crossword puzzles. I've seen some reading articles with embedded video, which was kinda neat, but if I had one, I know that I'd just play games and watch videos on it, instead of reading anything.
In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
There is no "natural monopoly" or "natural duopoly" in the OS space. There is monopolistic and anti-competitive actions that make it very hard for 3rd party options to survive. Which is the goal of Apple and MS, since they have the desktop space to themselves and they want the exact same situation in the mobile space. This is not an example of a "natural duopoly" coming to fruition, but rather that HP could not compete on the business end of things.
This is too simple. Of course only a limited number of different systems will gain broad third-party support, just because it's too expensive to support more than one or two systems. This tends to push under fringe systems and they drown very quickly then.
How many options should app developers have to support? Three, four, five versions of their apps? For systems that look very much as if they might vanish into nothing a year later?
And of course Apple (or MS or Google) try to be one of those you can't ignore. This isn't "anti-competitive", it's competitive.
I'm not saying that they don't try to lock you in (they do), but there's a very natural tendency of users and developers to flock to the one or two most common systems.
and i've not read it above yet. It's called "dumping" and can get a manufacturer into a lot of trouble.
Is that if you sell something significantly below its bill of materials cost, you can unload your inventory in a hurry.
-jcr
"The Nexus of coolness orders you to buy cool stuff." - Hans Sleiman Van der Meher - Dutch Philosopher
Give up now, and sell your remaining stock at $99 a shot.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Ever consider that all those fanbois are fans for a reason? I only own an iPod (bought in 2007) but I can see that Apple makes quality hardware and software.
What fanboys of all stripes need is a cold dose of reality, but until then, I'll read the fights and laugh, laugh, laugh.
I think it already has that.
http://hothardware.com/News/Android-at-48-Market-Share-in-Q2/
And that pisses off apple to no end.
So I have to ask, does anyone actually use tablets?
Nope, no one. Not a single person. All the sales numbers are fake, and the devices don't actually exist outside of demo units.
There are lots being sold and they look cool but based on my anecdotal experiences, users tend to spend their time "zooming in and out", "flicking", looking through their apps and then.... angry birds... to me, that does not qualify as "using".
I'm willing to assume that it may still be a new toy for them but the "cool" look rapidly evapourates and makes me appreciate the power and versatility of my notebook.
I guess the important thing is they're happy and I suspect I am at least equally annoying to them.
Vive la différence.
BM3
There's a big difference between people buying an item, and then people actually using it after the novelty wears off.
Tablets are a lot like gym memberships. Lots of people will spend a large amount of money on one, but after a couple of weeks they'll just stop using it. The gyms will be able to go on and on about selling a record number of memberships, and making record profits, but the customers themselves will receive very little utility from their purchase.
No doubt it is quality hardware, there stuff always has been, but I bet you don't remember the OS10 is way better than that other OS or the powerpc is better than Intel x86. Look at what got them good. Open source software and x86 processor architecture.
I just don't want to support them, and that is my choice.
Somebody needs to learn how to moderate.
This article makes the typical geek mistake of assuming that Android tablets are failing due to some technical reason such as "not enough apps". This assumes customers are making perfectly rational choices and are looking at things such as "app selection" when they "buy a tablet."
Right now there is not even a "tablet" market. There is an "iPad market." That is it. I was in the DFW airport with a friend. A bunch of non-Apple gizmos were on display in a locked case. One was a tablet. "What's that?" she asked. "It's a tablet." "What's that?" she asked. "It's like an iPad." "Oh."
People see tons of iPad commercials. They see iPads everywhere--in Starbucks, on the airplane, in the doctor's waiting room. The guy at work brings his in and talks about how great it is. All of them have that Apple logo on the back. No other tablet has this kind of dominance.
So people buy an iPad. They don't even know other models exist, and typically if you tell them there are alternatives, they don't care. The iPad is becoming synonymous with tablet, the same way iPod is the MP3 player and the Walkman was it back in its day.
Amazon may be able to overcome this with its marketing muscle. If they do, though, it won't be because they got some sort of "critical mass" behind Android to give it "more apps" and it certainly won't be due to geek crap like some sort of high-resolution screen or more gigahertz. A very low price would be a start.
Penny - plain text accounting
Except for the fact that at least one study has shown users actually spend more time using their tablet the longer they have it.
I own one; I use it as: an e-reader (kindle, ibooks, and unsecured epubs downloaded from third parties), general web browser, occasional netflix device when traveling & wifi supports it, email (reading, and sending for "lightweight" personal emails), portable "stereo" when traveling - with a small set of external speakers, does quite well at playing some music to listen to while I work; instapaper is a killer application - save stuff I see and want to look at later during the day at work, pull up Instapaper and review my stuff that night; RSS reader; Sirius device (with portable speakers & wifi, works great); occasional skype; news; great when covered by a ziploc bag for working with recipes in the kitchen, a little dicking around with some various musical apps (virtual piano works surprisingly well & guitar chord reference are nice); and yes, the occasional games - crosswords, plants vs. zombies, tetris, words with friends - casual stuff with family and friends.
I've owned it for a good 8 months now... novelty hasn't worn off quite yet, and I'd honestly say my experience mirrors the findings of the study linked above: I've found MORE, not less, to do with it over time. It gets an hour of two of casual usage every day, more when I'm traveling - I still find it quite useful, even with having a laptop to take with me when I travel.
The number is actually closer to 20:1, based on figures from last month. Shipments may be going out 8:1 in favor of the iPad, but sales, at least prior to the TouchPad's fire sale, were closer to 20:1 in favor of the iPad. The difficulty is that the manufacturers, Apple excluded, are primarily offering units shipped in their quarterly reports, rather than units sold, so you have to do some calculations to put together the various figures.
I've done something similar to that.
I've separated out both my phone and my phone plans.
I now carry around a 7" tablet, the original Galaxy Tab, which is a dream of a mobile Internet device. It's big enough to pretty much completely defuse any desire I have to carry around a laptop, while still weighing less than a pound and being totally portable. I then buy a data-only connection on this for only $25 a month from AT&T ($15 a month is also available if you don't use much data), and I have a web and app experience that totally kills what I used to have with a smartphone.
I now also carry around a dirt-cheap tiny prepaid cellular phone. I'm not a huge talker, and when I do talk, I can use a device that has a form-factor designed for talking, and the prepaid plan is dirt cheap.
All in I'm paying about $30 a month for a superior web/app experience, and a superior phone experience.
HP may have lost money on these tablets but look at the user base they now have, I'm sure they will take advantage of it. There is no way HP is going to ditch over a million users, and potential to gain more. All HP did was get the snowball rolling, it may have cost them a lot but now there is no stopping it.
I don't think you're right. I think it's a very real effect that most hardware and software companies only cater to the top1-3 players in the market. For Desktop OSses that's Windows, even OSX is lagging far behind in available software and hardware with Linux a distant third. On the smartphone iOS is number one, with Android being nearly supported as well and Windows and Symbian tied for a distant third place.
It's the law of diminishing returns for hardware and software developers. At some point it's not worth supporting anything but the top 1-3 as the cost outweighs the gains. It's why most things only support Windows.
The other major force is the users. They tend to aggregate to the dominant player, as to them easy exchangeability and compatibility and available support are important.
If Apple was as dominant in the tablet market, as Microsoft is in the desktop market, then even giving the Touchpad away for free would only have given HP a reaction at the level Linux enjoys.
Microsoft of course got where it is in the desktop market though all kinds of monopolistic and anti-competitive actions. I haven't seen Apple or Google really do anything like that. What I see is fair and open competition. Apple isn't asking operators not so sell Android phones next to their iPhones and Google isn't blocking access to gmail for iPhones. That would be anti-competitive behaviour.
Instead they compete on price and quality.
Apple started from scratch in 2007, Google in 2009, I'm amazed how they obliterated established players like Microsoft and Nokia in such little time. I'm sure another new player could as well if they could do something that would be far ahead of Apple's and Google's offerings.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Well, of course. The longer you have any product, the more uses you're gonna find for it.
Have a product for long enough, and you're eventually gonna figure out how to port a certain 1990s hell-themed god-awesome FPS to it. And Tetris, too. ;-)
Developers: It's not price or unwilling buyers
Android has tons of units out there: yes.
Android has an approachable market: no.
The problem with Android is that there isn't the same capabilities to lead to uniform software on all the Android platforms. They don't have any of the following:
o Uniform touch interface ...which boils down to needing to chase a bunch of minority devices, each of which represents a tiny fraction of the market, even if the market penetration of Android as a device OS happens to be huge, in aggregate.
o Uniform accelerometer
o Uniform screen resolution (or scalable via x2 with black bars, like the iPad)
o Uniform CPU horsepower
o Uniform GPU horsepower
o Uniform Sound interface
o Uniform applications API
Apple on the other hand has all of those things, and they have a huge buyer market for a write-once (or write-once, do graphics twice) application because of it.
It's absolutely no wonder Apple is kicking Android's butt, and *that's* what the article should have taken away from the HP Touchpad failure, rather than just a generic "needs developers".
-- Terry
It's time for a big brand or perhaps a cell phone company to start renting touchpads: $50 down and $19.95 a month, return it whenever you want.
Sure, it's $300 a year for the consumer instead of $300-$600 purchased, but people have been trained by the cell phone industry, and this could be a way to gain huge market share.
It would probably be in Google's interest to get an Android ROM for this sooner rather than later. For a minimal investment of some developers time. They'll gain a large marketshare of new tablet users fairly quickly If they can provide an adequate user experience for android in short order. Before all the new touchpad owners either get tired of WebOS and shelf the tablet, or get used to it and not want to take the time to change.
Yes 100$ is an impulse buy for most, but I suspect that quite a few of the buyer where also expecting the tablet to be able to display a web page, read email, play a few game like angry bird and read book, and this product is capable of all of this Most of the buyer also assumed a tablet with the HP name (and for some Palm) previously priced at +500$ can't be that bad! Now there's a bounty to put Android but as far as I am concerned if I put my hand on one I will use it as is hoping that it can also play avi and stream music/movies, all the rest is already there! Let's hope the marketing guru will understand that people are expecting to pay the same price for a tablet than for a netbook or quite close, they will pay premium maybe for bigger app store or for steve jobs signature...
The problem has never been applications, the problem has always been functionality.
People care about doing what they want to do, it doesn't even matter how hard it is, people jump through hoops on Windows daily because it allows them to do what they want.
iFanboys say "its the App's" because this is where 95% of the functionality of iDevices comes from. With Android it's different, the OS assumes responsibility for a significant proportion of functionality whilst the applications are secondary to that. It is and always has been about "do or not do", products that "do" succeed, products that "not do" die off. This is the real lesson from HP/WebOS, dont fall behind and limit what your customers can do and this is far from the first example.
This is changing very rapidly, people said the same thing about Android phones a little while ago, then the Moto Droid and HTC Desire were released and everyone knew who Android was. The same is happening with tablets, Every Telco in Oz is advertising a cheap-o ZTE tablet for A$200-ish, they are also trying to get more expensive Android tablets like the Tab 10.1 and Xoom. Not to mention things like the Toshiba Thrive and Acer Iconia on sale at box retailers. This is why Apple is trying to get courts the world over to block the sale of the Tab 10.1, a critical mass happens when enough places sell Android tablets and enough people buy them and people will buy them because Android offers functionality without restriction or to quote the old marketing line, "droid does".
Android tablets have already eaten between 20 and 40% of the market depending on the market you're measuring by the end of Q2 2011. This is from practically 0% in Q2 2010
Apple fans are extraordinarily brand loyal, but their numbers are a lot smaller then you think, the average person who ones an iDevice is nowhere near as brand loyal.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Seriously, the very next day Quickoffice announced editing support for MS Office files on the Touchpad.
Hell, it had been on the market how many months? and only in North Am. and UK? One sticking point someone elsewhere mentioned was lack of Netflix. No problem elsewhere in the world, as there are no such service anyways. HP should have gone global ASAP.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
In the world of imagination the iPad is the only real tablet that dominates all the crappy Android tablets. In the real world the Android tablet share is 30% and rising rapidly, while the iPad share is 60% and plummeting. If you include e-readers in the calculation then the iPad share drops even more. This is the exact same process that occurred for smart phone OSes over the past couple of years. iOS came out and took a lead but was pummeled once decent Android phones were widely available. The iPad will soon be relegated to a niche just like RIM.
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/57396-surprising-report-reveals-androids-30-tablet-share
The reason HP and everyone want(ed)s to get into the tablet market is they see apple making 50+% margin on them. That includes the base model, and there isn't any way that an extra 48G of flash and a 3G modem costs $300. The higher end ones are even higher margin.
Frankly, the three most expensive parts are the lcd, case and the battery. Two of which are significantly less expensive in the >500,000 quantity range.
The funny thing about these tear downs is that the parts costs are based on the kinds of prices you get when you call digikey and ask for 10k units. When you can go to walmart and buy some cheap garbage, pull it apart and find the exact same part already soldered to some junk you just paid less for than buying the part from digikey, you _KNOW_ that buying it in large unit quantities in china is significantly less expensive (digikey after all needs to make 50% margin too). Plus, in the case of Apple, they have cut out 1/2 the electronics middlemen because they are manufacturing the processor/etc themselves.
The problem, is that like the other tablet manufactures, HP looked at apple getting fat on 50+% margins and wanted a piece of the pie. So, they bought webos, created a tablet, priced it like apple, and were amazed when it didn't sell.
There are two main reasons for that: first the touchpad is not a mature devices (aka more apps, more stable experience, etc), secondly HP in even their wildest dreams doesn't have anywhere the brand loyalty/following/premium that apple does. Apple is such a premium brand, that frankly it doesn't really matter what they charge, people will buy them the same way people buy Gucci.
In the end if HP had been willing to take a 10% margin on the device, and sell them for $200, they would have probably beaten apple, the same way that android _IS_ beating the iphone (aka larger market share, not necessarily larger profit). The only problem is that HP didn't have any interest in giving the consumer an inexpensive tablet, or even winning the market, if they couldn't have the margin...
So in the end, they were greedy, and that greed made them too stupid, to realize that they had to actually _COMPETE_ with Apple by providing more consumer value because they weren't going to win a battle with a mature product sold by a brand that inspires fanaticism.
Interesting how YMMV. I see tablets (iPad 99% of the time) everywhere. Not so much in business/school situations (as you say a netbook/laptop is better for that), but definitely lots of tablets on the bus/train. Also they are becoming ubiquitous on flights (particularly in planes without seat-back IVRs ... lotta people pull out their iPad to pass the time).
But most of all, I see more tablets than anywhere else in the hands of twenty-somethings using the free WiFi at cafes. 5 years ago you'd go into a cafe and see laptops everywhere. Now I'm seeing tablets outnumber laptops in such places. I'm in Australia, but they seem even more prevalent in some other areas of the world. Had a two-week business trip to Singapore last month and I'd say at least half the people sitting in any given Starbucks (or similar) was tapping away on an iPad.
Not sure about this. I have an iPad and it gets used daily. My wife didn't use it much at first, but now she found a few apps she likes on it, she uses it more than I do. I love the thing because I travel a lot and it's much nicer to carry an iPad around than a heavy, power-hungry, laptop.
This was a nearer thing than you're making it out to be. At the time the Pre was first released, Android was barely known to mainstream consumers. What really made the difference was that Palm and Sprint attempted to market the Pre as "a phone smart enough for Mom" - to which end they made the device too small (since that's what Mom apparently wanted), and produced an ad campaign that was very confused about its message and purpose.
Android, on the other hand, was marketed from the get-go as a souped up techno-orgasm (remember the "Droid" ads?), which appealed to the early adopter geeks. And the reality is that non-early-adopters are motivated fear more than through desire for features, so they follow whatever the early adopter geeks are doing.
If Palm had given the Pre a 4" screen, focused their marketing on the geeks who were the only people who actually cared about these products in 2009, and come out with quick improvements like faster CPUs and more sensors, then we might all now be using our WebOS devices to read an article about Google exiting the smartphone market.
I saw one once at an airport bar. An older businessman was awkwardly tapping out an email. Then he put it away. This was a few months after the iPad first came out. I haven't seen one since.
I'm not too surprised. For being a "portable" device they're surprisingly clumsy to carry around. If I was flying with one, It would probably just say in my carry-on. If I was going to pull my bag out, I'd probably just grab the computer. It does more, and sits up on the tray-table all on its own.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I see a few people using them on the train or waiting at stops, always reading or surfing (I've never, ever seen anyone type text on a tablet in public!) In my experience there are far fewer people using tablets on PT than using laptops on PT, but they're definitely out there. (Most people that I see on PT are using smartphones for casual websurfing -- not surprising as they're much smaller and lighter, but not significantly less functional ...)
Personally, I can't see the need for a tablet in my life right now -- I'd quite happily buy the asus eeepad transformer if I could justify it (which at $350 is one of the best equipped and also one of the cheapest tablets out there), but I can't honestly see where I'd use it. I have a smartphone for casual surfing, a kindle for reading and a netbook for actually doing work on. There's no place that a tablet would fit in.
That's the big question for me. Will HP just dump the current stock and call it quits? Will they up manufacturing all of a sudden? Will they release the pads in more parts of the world? At first, it appeared that they were just offloading stock to get rid of it, but now all of a sudden, they do a 180 in PR and claim it's a huge success and new batches should be available soon. At US $99 I'd want one, but try getting one in mainland Europe right now....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
it used to be that needed userbase was just 2 million sold devices, so now it's fifty? or 200m? how does it work like that? developing got more expensive when it got cheaper and faster?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
HP just unwittingly and probably unwillingly just handed the game to Android.
While the sell off of $99 tablets is certainly going to hurt Samsung, etc in the pocketbooks in terms of lost sales, the fact is almost all the people who bought the Touchpads are going to install Android on them.
In a blink of an eye, the Android tablet market just grew by over a million units sold.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Interesting how YMMV. I see tablets (iPad 99% of the time) everywhere. Not so much in business/school situations (as you say a netbook/laptop is better for that), but definitely lots of tablets on the bus/train. Also they are becoming ubiquitous on flights (particularly in planes without seat-back IVRs ... lotta people pull out their iPad to pass the time).
Interesting, as I'm also in Australia (in Melbourne) and I've seen precious few tablets around in any form. On trains and trams, I still see heaps of laptops; whereas the number of tabs I've seen since I got back here from overseas a month ago I can count on the fingers of one hand. My impression is that most people are using their smartphones for the types of things you'd do with tablets -- I often spend my train ride surfing the net, and many people around me are doing exactly the same.
I haven't seen anyone using a table at a cafe since I've been back (the closest was seeing a dude with a tablet at the restaurant I went to last night, although he didn't use it once the entire time and it mostly seemed to serve the purpose of mopping up sauce ... :)
The big change I've noticed over the last six months is the big increase in the numbers of android phones (despite Oz being rather late to the party as regards androids, and seriously overcharging as always.) With 4.3" phone screens, the need for a separate tablet becomes significantly less, I think ...
I agree and disagree. If you want to use the analogy of MS vs Apple OS (vs Linux), the dominant player is MS, and then OS, and then far behind is linux (god bless us), then there sort of is only room for 2 dominant players. But, i dont think that HP failed because there isnt room for a third Tablet OS, i think they failed because they rushed the product, fretted about the new tablet market and 'lossed' revenue and executed a bad move because they didnt know what to do.
They bought a company that was going nowhere, for too much. Palm had already proven that people werent interested in it & that their software/hardware simply wasnt usable or stable. IF HP had actually created a decent operating environment (instead of just focusing on aesthetics) coupled with a well made, robust hardware offering with decent features and a reasonable price, then they could have been a market changer.
BUT this is the same problem that Moto, Samsung, Asus, etc face, they are pricing against Apple..... they cant, because they arent Apple, they should be pricing against themselves! Just like they stopped pricing their laptops against Apple!
Unless you're prepared to absolutely bleed money on every maxiPad sale, you're not going to soak up even a single percentage point of the iPad's market dominance.
But is it worth it ? Well,if your hardware is good enoug, your OS nice enough, and the various development/hacking solutions decent enough...
well then the device might attract a big enough user-base and gain interest from enough developpers.
WebOS is really a wonderful piece os software, with lots of potential. It's a late commer in the game, but still has gazhered a significant community, thank to its "homebrew out of the box, no need for exploit, only special commands" approach. With some luck HP might have achieved critical mass of users and jump start a good app ecosystem.
if HP is wise, they should observe what is happening in the community. And if webOS has gained any momentum thank to they sale, they should start licensing it to 3rd party hardware maker, offering an alternative to android.
(even better would be to open their user interface - the only closed source part of webos beside the bluetooth stack - under some permissive license. To be on par with Android)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Android user base is too small for developers to invest in? What a joke ... The reason why the iPad is so successful is that it has good usability, looks great and Apple has a good reputation. Apple confirms it by going after Samsung for copying the design (and being a well-known brand).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I can carry my 7" netbook around with me just whenever, and it can do all the things you list, as well as running full-scale programs if I want them. (Which capability I mostly use to play 90s PC games, but it could be used for anything). I can understand wanting a device this size, but I can't see why you wouldn't put a proper keyboard on it, and make it compatible with existing software.
I am trolling
Getting tired of these clueless articles about lowring tablet prices.
The Touchpad bill of materials was $318. Most other Android tablets would be in the same ballpark. No company is going to spend $300+ on something, and sell it for $200, for "the good of the people".
What these article authors have to wake up and understand about the Android ecosystem is that none of these manufacturers make any money whatsoever on app sales. Zip, nada, zero. Google takes a tiny slice, the rest goes to the developer. If you are Asus/Sony/Sharp/ViewSonic/Acer/Motorola, your profit margin ends the second the tablet reaches the consumer's hands. If you lost money at that point, you lost money, period.
That's not true at all.
People don't want an operating system that wouldn't run their applications. That means people want one standardized operating system. That's a natural monopoly/duopoly (there's only room in the market for one maybe two competitors). The fact that every user has a pile of software for whatever OS they chose means you have a natural barrier to entry if you plan on replacing that OS.
That's the way it is in the PC world (Windows is dominate, OSX, and Linux just fight over scraps), the embedded world (Linux rules here), and the phone/tablet world (iOS and Android are duking it out now).
Fulfilled Promises, User Interface, Build Quality, Price.
Apple dominated the mp3 player market, not because it had the best specs, not because it was cool but because it delivered what it promised. The interface was easy to use, a few minutes and you knew all you needed to know. When you pick up one of the early $500 ipods, you knew you could kill a hobo with it. My 10GB 2nd Gen Ipod lasted 6 years 4 continents and dozens of countries and three hobos that got out of line. A lot of people say Itunes is crap, but nobody has mentioned a better music management system.
My Droid X, it's pretty good except Motorolla tells me I should reboot it once a day, the buttons might react when I touch them, the battery won't last 10 hours and sometimes the phone doesn't work. My work issued iphone 3G had none of those problems.
The Xoom was shipped with a worthless SD Slot, broken 4G and who knows what else. The positive reviews of the Touchpad used words like "cheap" and "bulky." And reviewers of Android and Touchpad tablets all mentioned about the unusually high number of freezes, crashes and reboots.
So.....making a tablet nobody wants, then selling them off at crazy eddie prices after nobody buys them....is referred to as a success? Really? It's like falling down the stairs and having your pants come off, then referring to it as "a dramatic entry". Someone finally came up with a way to best the iPad....but they can only do it once......
Instead of adding features until, boo hoo, it cost $385 to build so we MUST sell it for $599.
Literally. Nobody is buying it.
Probably 20 guys on slashdot right now could post an $85 dollar Bill of Materials. And schematics. And probably 10 linux kernel hackers could advise how build it to pre-written drivers and make it very linux easy to port and easy to run and to be supported forever and even have user servicable parts inside. (gasp!)
Did anyone notice how popular linux was when there is 99 dollar hardware? And how many hackers and rooters there are? LOL! The Linux nerds are legion! There are Massive Numbers out there. Despite media spin and denial and other FUD to say otherwise.
Linux and a $99 price point will wipe out a lot of companies. They know it. They have been fighting it since they killed the one laptop per child project. Also *TO BE* sold at a 99 price point.
With Steve out of the picture innovation is dead. Patent wars are ramping up as the implosion begins. Helium is burnt instead of Hydrogen. Linux on commodity hardware IS the end game. Does that race to commodization start now? Will some new tactic be used to delay the inevitable? WIll the IP lawyer be able to buy a villa on International House Hunters? Will Bill find out Marsha is cheating on with his best friend Dave? Stay tuned!
It's great to be in IT. What other industry has this kind of Drama?
"success of HP's fire sale"
I don't have to read past this line. Success? "Hey everyone. My product line is dead and gone in 50 days. I must be doing something right!"
HP was forced to get whatever they could because the alternative was for Best Buy and every other retailer (assuming there were any) sending back every last Touchpad (as the stragglers as they were returned) to HP and dealing with further losses incurred by such an action.
This was about as much the opposite of success as can be imagined for a product manufacturer.
Precisely why I root for Android.
It's the exact opposite of mono/duo-opoly. It enables anyone that implements the Dalvik VM (which is license free) the opportunity for extremely little work (compared to rewriting the application) to have practically all of the Android applications. There cannot be a monopoly because everything is publically available.
Google's management of the Android market sucks? Use Amazon. Use GetJar. SlideMe.
You can see even new companies like Notion Ink bring a tablet to the market, and have a fighting chance.