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Acer CEO Declares a Tablets Bubble
retroworks writes "According to a story in Digitimes, Acer chairman JT Wang is predicting the end of 'tablet fever.' 'Commenting on tablet PC's impact on the notebook industry, [Acer chairman JT Wang] pointed out that tablet PC fever is already starting to cool down and consumers are also being attracted by notebooks again with Intel's Ultrabooks and Microsoft's Windows 8 the major attractions.' Back to the old model then... PC and laptop sales, driven by Windows upgrades?"
That tablet PC fever is already starting to cool down because, let's face it, the tablet PC is actually a pretty dumb idea. How can we improve the friendliness of computers? I know! Let's take away the keyboard! What next? Take away the screen? That would look cool! I mean, seriously, once you have impressed all of your friends with your new trendy gadget, you have to go back to writing emails, articles, software, books, and good luck with that if you don't even have a keyboard. I have said it many times and let me say it once more: There is no "tablet fever". There never was. There is only "apple fever" and it is not going to cool down any time soon. Hardware vendors were trying to sell tablet PCs literally for decades but there never was any demand, partly because the whole idea is just a notebook without a keyboard. It looks cool but that's it. Using a phone without physical keyboard is hard enough, why anyone would want a computer that is equally hard to use? The only reason people are buying tablet PCs today is either because it's apple or it's like apple so having one somehow makes you cool and that is much more impotant than being productive. Sad but true.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Is he talking about iPad fever or lame tablet/netbook fever?
If the former, he can wait until Apple's next quarterly results. If the latter, well, he's probably right. Maybe he's talking from his own sales numbers?
The tablets' one and only problem is price. And e-readers are still a big ripoff also.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The continued popularity of the iPad (and decent success enjoyed by Asus and Samsung with their respective Android tablets) would tend to put the lie to this claim. Acer's own entry into the tablet race was by all accounts a bit crap, so this sounds like some serious sour grapes to me. Also, I haven't heard from anybody in the real world who's excited about these 'ultrabooks' ; they sound like a sad marketing scheme from Intel, along the lines of their old 'Viiv' branding.
--- Bwah?
Touch screens are a step back in Human Computer Interaction
I think you will end up seeing more tablets with the power of a pc. I'm talking units like Asus' eee slate 121. We are moving some of our sales reps to these as they provide a full computer while also allowing for more sleek presentations. Im personally waiting on the second gen as it will have an i5 v2 in it verses the current which is i5 v1
ketchup!
(see, that has no relevance to the article either)
While manufacturers that have failed to grow a userbase that lets them compete with Apple may wish for tablets to be a bubble, I feel they're ignoring a new segment.
I have never purchased an apple device, bar an old 5G ipod in the past. When I saw Jobs present the iPad I could immediately see the utility. It doesn't compete with my laptop or my desktop. I use it in places my laptop doesn't work well. Say on the sofa, or in the kitchen. I can grab it and look something up while walking around. I can take it when traveling and use it to read news, watch video and still get emails or even remote desktop / ssh if needed.
When HP liquidated their touchpad stock I grabbed one of those too. The iPad's app store is certainly a huge draw, but $100 is easily worthwhile for the web browser, video player and email. The trouble for the manufacturers who aren't Apple is that while $100-$200 is easily justifiable for that device, at the $400-500 price point folk want an iPad, mostly because of the Apps.
The touchpad doesn't have a Netflix client. I can't fathom why HP didn't just pay Netflix to develop it, as it would easily have helped drive sales. I'm pretty sure they could have partnered with Amazon too for video and music services. At the moment, every non-apple brand of tablet is a compromise, yet there's no discount on price to reflect this. As a result, their userbase remains small and the apps remain undeveloped.
Unless someone really tries to compete with Apple, either by offering a better product at the same price point, or a similar product at a discount, tablet sales will continue and only one manufacturer will benefit.
One company just had the highest quarterly sales in their entire history.
The other company just lost a few million dollars.
Which company do you think has a better clue about what consumers want?
Netbooks were a very high growth product until the next fad came around. I also expect the same pattern with tablets. The new tech is very novel, but I like my cellphone/laptop combination.
Were I a significant shareholder of Acer, I would be calling for the replacement of JT Wang. His comments have consistently shown a disconnect from reality and that is not the sort of person one should want directing a corporation. Closing your eyes and pretending things are the way you want them to be rather than how they are isn't a sound business strategy.
I realize that he shouldn't be a cheerleader for the competition but he's gone beyond that and is well into the realm of ignoring facts that are clear to anyone paying even a cursory attention to the market.
Is vaporware, and no one is yet excited about it. Microsoft is, however, pissing off their developers.
Fever? Bubble? No. People are just realizing that there's only one tablet on the market that isn't complete crap. All indicatiors point to Apple enjoying continued healthy sales for the foreseeable future. Frankly, Apple's embarrassingly complete dominance in the tablet arena is only hurting the reputations of those companies who continue to pump out garbage trying to make a quick buck.
I have always believed that tablets were a very small niche application.
They can not, and will not replace real computers.
Theoe apple fanboys really can distort perceptions when they get going.
"Our tablet-thingies don't sell well. Damn, even I cant remember what they are called - Convertertrons? Flippamagicals? It was something with 'Acer' ..."
Fandroids hate facts.
In its most recent quarter, Acer lost $234 million. Acer has no competitive tablet offering among the dozens of competing Android tablets. And of course the iPad is selling like mad with an expectation of 22 million units sold during the upcoming holiday quarter.
The Acer CEO is a dimwit who's talking smack because there's nothing else he can do to stem the tide of abject failure coming out of his factories. He is basically berating the customers for buying "hot" tablets, particularly the iPad, instead of buying the tried-and-true plastic Wintel units that Acer vomits up. His company bet big on low-margin netbooks and lost, and now he's betting on Intel "ultrabooks".
HP just bailed out of the entire PC business (echoing IBM's decision in 2004), and among the reasons was that the tablet effect is real.
The Acer CEO's effort is better focused on coming up with better products, not whining.
To take what is essentially an expensive toy, an oversized smartphone which doesn't make calls, a laptop which is only barely practical for any serious use, and turn it into a smash success which creates an entirely new sector of portable electronics and dominates the shit out of it. Apple is the New England Patriots of consumer technology.
Before last weekend, I would say it's a fad and will eventually die out within a few years. Then I saw my grandfather using a iPad, that was eye opening. He's 90, been partial paralyzed for 15 years after a stroke so he can only use his left hand. He's never really use a computer and doesn't understand the concept of the Internet. My uncle had brought the iPad to show my cousin's white coat ceremony photos. After showing my grandfather how to open the Photo App (it's the sunflower icon), selecting which album he wanted to see (Graduation, Family Photos, etc.), moving the next picture by swiping your finger, and zooming in and out with pinching, under 5 minutes he was able to do all that and had a blast. I haven't seen him amazed by technology, ever. We've try to get him to use a computer, that didn't work.
There's something here in tablets, not as a computing platform. It's a communication medium for the other 5 billion unconnected humans. It should be a seamless experience with the absolutely the lowest learning curve possible.
There's no tablet bubble, there's not even a tablet market. There's an iPad market and any other tablet will have to carve out the same niche since Windows tablets.
Tablets were a neat toy without a market. They had a cool factor going so people bought them. They're now starting to find more and more uses for them. I've been to two restaurants where our orders were taken on 7" Galaxy tabs. I've read of at least one or two restaurants putting their high-end wine lists on iPads. Musicians have been starting to put iPads to use during performances.
We're still at the tip of the iceberg with this. Lenovo's releasing their business-oriented tabs and I've seen stories of companies either putting tabs to use or preparing for such.
I don't necessarily see the tab market going away.
Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them. That doesn't mean they were a fad or a bubble. Without looking at sales figures, I would guess that all major inventions, from the Model T to the microwave oven to the MP3 player have gone through a similar cycle. They will continue to sell as people upgrade or replace aging units, but not at the rate they once did. It's a huge win for Apple that they got in at the ground floor. All the "me too!" companies now have an uphill fight on their hands. The Acer CEO likely knows this, and so is declaring the grapes to be sour.
Why would anyone want a computer in his house?
Why would anyone need more than 640k?
Who wants to watch movies on their TV?
I guess it hasn't been proven scientifically that wishing doesn't work... Good luck with that, Mr. Wang!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When my Acer netbook died I bought an Android tablet for a replacement (same price ~$300) but man the tablet sucks! It's useless for anything involving typing, which is email, posting, coding, gaming, everything. Then it's very limited can't play some media that a netbook could do easily. Last but not least it sucks to watch movies on when the codec does work! I used to get in bed and put my netbook on my chest and it would be like watching a huge screen. With the tablet you have to like hold it with your hand for 2 hours, which kind of takes you out of the movie. Or I guess prop it up on a pillow which of course it slides off at random times. Shitsux. It's ok for reading pdfs and listening to audio books but ... a netbook does that just the same! I'm sooo over tablets.
... for the wrong reasons.
Notebooks and tablets will merge. Tablet HW is already good enough to run desktop OS & software...
A tablet is not a competitor to a laptop/desktop
You're right. A tablet is better than a desktop.
I have everything - tablets , pdas, whatever ... The only time I use a desktop is for software development. That's all. News, entertainment, research, or whatever - some sort of handheld device.
Desktops are too bulky - they take up too much space.
.Upgrades? Pffft. I run'em into the ground. Desktops are for workers working on code or spreadsheets.
I just use a desktop when I need brute force - like compiling code. Everything else doesn't require such gauche equipment.
Worthless for anything that requires typing because typing on an on-screen keyboard is a nightmare.
Terrible web browsing experience.
Rubbish for gaming because of the lack of physical controls.
Useless for watching videos because who wants to hold their display while watching a film.
Can't be used for any RealWork such as programming, graphic design, stock trading or anything else.
I can't really think what else they could be used for.
I can see all sorts of commercial uses were laptops wouldn't work. For example, doing stock checks, taking orders in a restaurant, displaying plans for construction work, taking down survey results etc. To me tablets look ideal for many business applications but useless for consumers.
I didn't know "prays" was spelled "d-e-c-l-a-r-e-s"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I've completely replaced my laptop for all mobile computing with an iPad
if you replaced your laptop for all mobile computing with an ipad, then it is apparent that you were not doing mobile computing at all.
'writing emails', 'reading books', 'consume entertainment' is not 'mobile computing'. not to mention the stupidly simple and ungaugeable concepts you utter like 'making money'. ALL of these can be done with a decently sized, hell, even small sized half-smartphone.
while trying to do otherwise, you have become a pretty good example of what kind of fad this tablet fad is - an apple fad. perfectly portrayed by an apple fan.
Read radical news here
Acer, really? The company that so much invested in what came before the tablets (the netbooks, that is), now is stating something that is yet to be demonstrated. I mean, really? It sound like a kid that got his toy stolen by a smarter kid and as an answer he says: "well, that toy won't last, there are better ones out there". Netbooks were a half-cooked idea, portable as tablets, underpowered PCs but not as convenient (and let's face it, not as appealing to use). It was obvious when tablets (namely when the iPad) came around, the netbooks were dead. For Acer to say now that the same would happen to the tablet is not only presumptuous, but in fact all to be demonstrated. And even more, to say that what's coming after is a win8 tablet? The tablet's killer is a PC? That to me looks only like wishful thinking. But as it looks now, that's really not going to happen.
I have an iPad and I get real work done on it every day. For example just today, I gave a 50 page presentation using my iPad. And a few weeks ago, I was giving a presentation to about 100 people. and right before I went on, I was still editing my presentation, right on my iPad.
you are giving presentations on an ipad. the very thing you could do on a projection. or a laptop.
and
I am also able to get my work email and calendar, so, I have the ability to do most communication tasks I would do on my desktop. Plus, in a pinch, I can turn on VPN in to the work network, and run VNC, and do some tasks there.
ooooh !! you ALSO write emails !! and see a calendar !! thats great !!! except that if this is what you call 'mobile computing', and the 'work' related to that, please next time spare us the bullshit. a decent screen size half-smartphone can do all of those things, with the exception of the obscure 'tasks' you speak of doing with vpn. i assume instant messenger talk or other shit.
so this is the idea of apple fanbois' 'mobile computing'. giving presentations, presentations, more presentations, reading emails, a calendar, and, some obscure and inexplicable 'tasks'.
am i generalizing ? yes. someone else precisely told similar things on how he was doing 'mobile computing' on his ipad, and how great ipad and apple was. it apparently is a general naivete among you apple fanbois to take giving presentations and reading emails as 'mobile computing'. you dont need the word 'compute' there. its just 'mobile'. and a phone is sufficient for those.
Read radical news here
Can someone explain to me why Windows 8 is having such an impact on any market when it won't be released for, oh, another YEAR?
Were Microsoft and it's partners vapourware attempts to freeze markets always this transparent or are they just easier to spot now?
I'm sure people said the same thing about the mouse, the trackpad, etc. etc.
Only time will tell what's a step forward -- not some "expert's" little hypothesis.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I've been after an HP Tablet lately simply because I want a cheap portable computer - $99 is a good price point.
I recently bought my first laptop 6 months ago and didn't realize how bloody fragile and poorly engineered they are. The battery was getting stuck. So I tried to push it out, managed to carefully yank it out using a credit card to release the lever. When I tried to reinsert it, the pins weren't connected properly. I didn't apply much pressure putting it in. I finally get the battery back in and now I find myself with a broken screen. Going to be $200 to fix I think which is 1/3 the price I paid.
I'm sure as hell, not buying another $500+ laptop, let alone "Tablet" or iPad. Desktop for me.
Acer tablets obviously arent selling ! Idiot CEO ..
I'm not sure which this is.
But as other commenters have pointed out, a large part of his motivation comes from the fact that his company isn't competing well in that market. The iPad basically owns the tablet market. If there is a bubble, what will happen is that every tablet will die except the iPad.
That's bad for choice, particularly for people who want to hack their devices, put on unapproved apps, etc. Also, Apple is influenced at least somewhat by the innovations found in the competition. However, none of this will affect iPad prices, since Apple lives in their own world there. That isn't to say that they overcharge for what they sell, but that they don't sell any low-end stuff.
Buy something that exists just now and allows me to do what I want
OR
Wait until an unreleased OS turns up on a platform that doesn't actually exist yet.
Microsoft/Intel vapourware FUD yet again ?
I got a $100 dock for my ipad. It's an okayish $800 alarm clock now. But since the app can't run with the screen off and such, I have to leave the screen and dock on the whole night. If either go to sleep, the alarm doesn't go off. So I have my regular alarm clock as my "it's REALLY time to get up" set about half an hour after my ipad is due to start my wakeup playlist.
Totally worth the money..
Just like the worst contender in the Linux netbooks segment, MSI, waved off the netbook market, Acer is now waving off the tablet market after having produced what appears to be the most buggy of the Honeycomb tablets so far.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I think the day is close where you could buy TV/Monitors that have docking facilities for smart phones. With dual/quad processor phones coming on stream that are capable of most day to day computer activities, the days of the old desk top are numbered. The new desktop is the phone docking station (aka TV/Monitor) + wireless mouse/keyboard. Tablets are too big to be pocket portable, not big enough to do get stuff done.
I don't use the phone -- perfectly happy with face to face and written communications -- so WTF do I need a smartphone for?
The iPad might benefit from quite a few changes -- IR emitter, SD card slot, USB port, higher resolution, more CPU power, more memory, a less crippled OS, to name but a few -- but I'd rather have it than a smartphone (or a dumb one) any day of the week. And yeah, I own one (family owns several.) I also have laptops, desktops, etc... and it's *still* very useful. Mine sees use as a portable photographer's portfolio, an aurora analysis/warning tool, a GPS, a guitar tuner and music composition tool, an eBook reader, gives me free access to a great deal of the Internet without paying a phone company a penny, and yes, a seriously fun game machine. And more. I keep it with me at all times (lives in a handy pocket in my photographer's bag, which in turn is always with me, practically speaking.)
It's fine if you don't want/need one, for whatever reason. You are, no doubt about it, an expert on you. But your analysis of the actual worth of the item for other people is completely wrongheaded, because, believe it or not, we are not you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Android phones with HDMI outputs can be used with bluetooth keyboards/mice to act as if they are a PC.
That is, you bring your phone home, drop it on a docking station to charge and connect to your TV, it hooks up to your local WiFi, your BT input devices pair with it, and voila, you're surfing and emailing from your couch.
If mobile devices move in this direction, it may be the desktop PC that is on its last legs... although tablets are still on their way out.
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Monster Company and Grammy Awards winner Monster dre beats expert group in 2008 as well together developed the first big headphones Studio, which bacame popular in the world rapidly.
Tablets may never take off as a computer replacement, but when they get cheap enough with stylus inputs common enough they'd make a great paper replacement. Instead of a computer that you can do much less with, it will be composition notebook or a newspaper that you can do a lot more with. For students, engineers, artists, scientists, etc. paper does a lot of things that computers don't. Tablets + stylus can do most of the things that paper can do plus a lot of what a computer can do. MS had people salivating over the Courier for exactly that reason. They canned it anyway and that's why Apple is printing money while Microsoft just keeps printing office documents.
My wife uses Netflix on an iPad, even though a TV is right there, because she is moving around while sewing between machine and sewing board and elsewhere... the device just stays with her.
Since she has it on the the background while she does other things, she watches a few hundred TV shows a month. We've never gone over our bandwidth cap (Comcast cable modem).
The tablet is a device you can easily move while doing stuff all over the place, not just where you happened to put a TV. You know how lots of people bought three or four TV's for a home (not me mind you, but I know others that have)? No need when you can just have one really nice one for movies and a tablet to watch shows while getting stuff done around the house or sitting outside enjoying nice weather.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Windows # is Pre-Born, it is Abomination -- I can't figure out a darned thing on it and I hate it, especially since it is an OS/X wannabe that has this hangup about distinguishing between an active and an inactive application program. Durn trouble is that the computer labs cannot get the Engineering students to use Linux enough that they are switching some of the Linux machines to Windows #. Ugh.
Oh yeah? Well...I declare an Acer Bubble!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Slashdotters like you hate tablets because you can't let go of the PC. The thought of a world where PCs are a niche is scary to you. It's a nerd playground you've spent years learning, and now it's becoming obsolete for most users.
Who wants to go back the the past with stodgy, old-fashioned GUI driven by a 2x2 finger pad? The form of the platform may change, but intelligent users will demands for their computers the ease of use of a modern interface such as that provided by the best tablets. Out with the buggy whips and hand cranks.
Keep Doing Good.
Off by one... I think you meant http://xkcd.com/864/. That one references smart phones and flying cars (and android RealDolls in the alt text).
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I can see some cool uses like any kind of mobile document access, anything from mechanics to cooks' recipes. Unfortunately, the one use I'd actually buy one for isn't supported. I'd drop $500 on one if I could get school textbooks in electronic form (legally folks).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Until they mature, tablets are just a "toy" for the most part. Now that one airline is starting to use them instead of flight manuals, perhaps they will mature into a business centric device, but, I'll bet 90% of them are for people to read books, play games, videos and the like. I have a Dell streak, 5" phone/tablet I use for work purposes, and is handy when you don't have an internet connection and need to quickly VPN into the company network or look something up online.
Has this guy been living under a rock? Where was he when HP had it's TouchPad fire sale recently? People were physically lined up before opening time at all of the electronics stores I went to/talked to, just to get their hands on a tablet.
What Mr. Wang maybe means is: the $499 tablet PC fever is cooling down. Indeed. You can get a more powerful netbook for half that price.
nice blog
And there are now instructions available on how to replace the flash plugin with one that reports a different player ID, so it bypasses the block.
I've noticed a few people who aren't bringing their iPads to meetings any more. They're mostly just game machines.
I can't figure out why I'm the only person who seems to want a smaller form factor, something maybe 8 or 9 inches. Maybe even 7" that can fit in a jacket pocket.
I'd use the hell out of a really decent 7 or 8 inch tablet. I don't take my big ten incher around because it's just kind of a clumsy size for me. I find myself using it at home, but when I'm leaving I look down at it and decide I just don't need to carry it around.
I really believe the holy grail for tablets is going to be a fully functional device that's big enough for my old eyes and small enough to slip into the small outside pocket of a backpack. Also, it needs to be rugged enough to not need a case because if I wanted something in a case I'd carry a laptop. Gorilla glass maybe, and a tough, rubberized back. Rounded edges. Something that doesn't feel like I'm carrying around an 3x5 pane of glass.
I really seem to be the only one that's looking for something like that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Microsoft, absent as they are from the Tablet market on account of the fact that they can't make an OS that isn't a 15 gig piece of filth that requires a dual core 64bit box with 4 gig of RAM (just to provide a halfway decent Desktop experience), are leaning on anyone and everyone to trash the idea of tablets so they can resume their previous market dominance.
Barn, horse, door.
The problem with tablets/Ipads is their cost and performance. They are great for reading books and magazines (but Amazon's Kindle is better and a color Kindle with better battery life is coming soon). They are great for watching movies, but so is a laptop or various set-top boxes. Meanwhile their cost is just too high.
People don't have the money to splurge on toys when food and energy and housing and clothing prices are all going up. And up. And up. With no real end in sight.
Apple is like Ford or GM at around 1971. Not realizing what is just around the corner. A shakeout of enormous proportions. How can Apple survive when people will only buy $300-400 laptops they can do actual work on (which requires a keyboard and a trackpad) instead of a special purpose device at that price point? Heck how can Apple survive if most of the world goes to cheap cell phones because that's all they can afford?
Sure Apple can add Flash support. That's probably coming. And they can add better on-screen keyboards, or something along those lines externally other than clunky stuff available now. But can Apple produce and make a profit at around $50-$100 where affordability is likely to lie for non-essential electronic toys? My answer is no, not the least of which is that Apple is totally dependent on Chinese partners who make all their stuff and can easily just copy it and sell it under their own name, with the power of the Chinese Communist Party and Nation at their backing. Ask the Japanese bullet train manufacturers, GE, and other folks who found this out the hard way. China sells copies of all their stuff globally.
Ask yourself this, without Steve Jobs direct line to Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, how is Apple going to force Chinese crony capitalists who are sons and daughters of the Chinese Communist elite to leave all that money on the table (by not selling Apple clones of pretty much anything Apple makes?) When hell they make it anyway. Acer may have no real strategy or winning product, but that does not make Wang wrong. Heck China's now got lots of fake, clone Apple Stores selling the real deal (probably run out of the same factories making Apple stuff).
Apple blew it, and so did Jobs, not keeping manufacturing at home, close, so copying was far more difficult. Because of that they are hideously vulnerable to Chinese contract manufacturers just blowing stuff out at vastly cheaper prices being the same damn thing. What's Apple going to do ... sue? China? Really?
Can't believe Acer chairman made such remark. Seriously it doesn't matter if it is a tablet, a laptop or a calculator. It is about how you can make a device that makes people machine interaction much friendly and fun to use. An kudos to Apple, their iPad is aiming at that direction. Even the tablet market is saturated, people will keep buying device that is friendly and fun to use. In fact, with more tablet software, working and learning can also be done easier on the tablet. Saying that doesn't mean that there is no chance for laptop to survive in this market. There are still many good aspect of a laptop that tablet can't provide. However, the laptop manufacturers need to be creative, and make their devices easier and fun to use. Otherwise the tablets market, especially for the iPad will continue consume the PC or laptop market.
When you compare the interface, the tablet is smoother and more robust than a Windows PC (if less suited for anything resembling typing. I mean, people always say this is the computer your grandmother could go online with. My grandmother has bad eyesight and her only QWERTZ experience is with a mechanical typewriter; she's not going to cope with keys that can't be felt.)
The Windows PC is open to be wiped and set up with any operating system (or number of operating systems) without even having to learn the meaning of "jailbreaking". The PC ultimately wins.
It's pretty simple. I can't use a laptop while standing on a subway....Or a million other places, even around the home when it is a hard to manipulate clamshell. So now that the technology can handle a tablet it is here to stay.
Just it better be good. Not some half ass thrown together piece of ...
Anyway. Acer I guess is going to enjoy making cheap notebooks that don't sell very well and that I don't want. Enjoy Acer. I hope other like Samsung can establish there brand and provide an alternative and competition to Apple. (It keeps everybody moving forward)
The huge sales at $99 as HP liquidated their inventory of tablets indicates that the only problem is price. Generic Android tablets are now available in quantity for $50 to $109., FOB Shenzen, China. (Yes, some people who look at that will whine about the processor and memory specs. So?) Price won't be a problem for much longer.
Seriously... lots of people rushed out and bought the shit tablets on the market that look sorta like iPads but just aren't. Honeycomb is kinda interesting, but not really. It's a version 0.0001 of an operating system and the two times I played with it... it struck me that Google needs to spend more time communicated with app developers to try and make a better, more uniform experience.
iPad is a more or less useless device which is fairly ok for browsing the web, not too bad as a GPS if you have a iPhone near by and is quite nice for watching films.... you can't do anything useful on it without a computer to do the hard work, but you can rent or download a kiddy movie to keep the brats quiet on the car trip. At my company where we were all given iPads for christmas last year, no one actually uses it for anything productive.. half the people just gave them to their kids or wives as they had no utility. At my wife's company (newspaper) where every journalist has one, the ones who couldn't type to begin with are using iPads to write their articles now, the rest are using it for wikipedia access while they're typing on their laptops.
Android tablets don't run an software of interest. They are pretty boring to look at. They don't have a proper music or movie store as there's no iTunes type application to sync with. They just devices without an ecosystem behind them.
Oh... let's also note the massive number of users who got burnt last Christmas when they rushed out and bought Android tablets for their wives, kids, etc... only to find that the lifespan of that device was measured in hours since in January, Google said "we're not supporting all those old tablet in the next OS release coming out next month... and BTW... nearly no software written for the new OS will run on the old OS... and BTW... you shouldn't waste your time developing for the old OS".
Microsoft will release Windows for ARM and tablets... with an external keyboard, those tablets will be useful as actual laptops. So a keyboard case with a touch pad would effectively make the device a laptop. When you want to use it as a tablet, watch films, play angry birds, etc... it'll work great. When you want to log into the office and do some work with keyboard and mouse, it'll work great. If you want to program an new app for the device, you can run Visual Studio and it'll work great. This is the point when tablets will start taking over traditional laptop sales.
Until then... there's just no alternative to laptops and iPads.
Cheap netbooks are too limited and no-one will want them any more, say high-ticket vendors at mere 103% increase in netbook sales year on year.
The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009 and 2010, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. "No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7," said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. "So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This 'internet' thing is just a fad too."
What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition, which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is "thoroughly inadequate" to the task. "Linux, of course, doesn't exist, wasn't the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn't cripple Microsoft's bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it's not like it can do twice as much in half the space."
Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. "Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don't run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft," he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.
Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. "If we carefully define tablets as 'not netbooks,' even though they're made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It's all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you'd like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it's suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9."
"Clap your hands if you don't believe in netbooks," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The reason people went bloody wild for the fire sale Touchpads wasn't the prospect of a $99 tablet - it was the prospect of a $99 tablet with a capacitative screen. Cheap crappy resistive screen tablets are readily available, but anything that browses the web and has a decent screen at a low price point will sell.
So how's the price curve for capacitative screens looking?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Your problem is that you are looking at a tablet as a replacement for a computer. Thats not what they are the for, unless you are a very light computer user.
There are very few laptops that I'd care to use while sitting in a comfy chair, checking email and browsing the web. The web and email experience is incomparably better than using a smartphone - and is also better than on the smaller "true" netbooks (because tablet OSs are better tailored to the screen size), the ergonomics (for comfy chair mode) are incomparably better than a laptop. The battery life is vastly better than laptops, and the instant on/off is actually instant.
The keyboard is fine for short emails and note taking at meetings. They're much less obtrusive at meetings than laptops, and you're not scrabbling for a mains socket after the first hour.
I'm not sure what you think the alternative is for mobile movie watching - unlike a laptop you can use a tablet on your lap, and there are plenty of cases that act as stands.
Game wise, tablets are not hot for FPS shooters, but they are great for other sorts of games (you may have missed the memo about casual gaming). RTS, tower defense, puzzle games, card/board games can all be great. Think "Plants v Zombies" rather than "Call of Duty".
I bought the original netbook, the EEE PC, when it came out, hoping that it would be good for the above. It wasn't, mainly because of battery life, crappy ergonomics and trying to run a desktop operating system on a small screen - turned out, even the iPod Touch was better (even though it had a small screen, the UI was designed to maximise it). The saving grace would have been that the first netbooks were impulse-buy cheap. Instead of solving those problems, the netbook market morphed into small, entry level Windows laptops, and the price crept up. Tablets replace the original netbook concept, and while they are more expensive, they do the job far better.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
When people can easily afford in these numbers, something which essentially amounts to a five-hundred dollar couch accessory, there really isn't much of an economic crisis going on.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Yes, that just proves tablets are better than laptops as real computers.
Idiot.
Motorola's semi-conductor unit (and all its chip factories) were spun off years ago into a company now called Freescale. What remained split in half. Google bought one of those halves, Motorola Mobility.
So Google is getting next to nothing with regards to silicon design, chip foundries, etc.
Not too long ago, the pundits were declaring the netbook moribund because sales had flattened.
Two claims that you seem to have missed in the GP.
(a) that the data flow that can entered on a tablet can be done on a PC in such a way that is more conducive to accuracy
(b) that "serious" work requires something other than an "underpowered" device like a tablet.
It was nice to see that the GP did admit that there were many applications for which a tablet is well suited. But there was certainly more than a little bit of condensention going on. Reminds me of a trouble ticket I raised back when I was doing software testing on Solaris in the 1990s. A job kept crashing in our UAT environment. Development sent the ticket back with the note "The job keeps crashing because the test server only has 2 gigs of RAM. Get a real server."
Killed mostly by the measly ATOM hardware (thanks Intel)
but in case of Tablets, they are actually useful. While I can see the current hype slowing down, I cannot
see them entirely go away. They are to useful and they are not bound by a processor maker who
actively tries to cripple their performance.
If they put a decent graphics card in it, make a keyboard dock and increase the screen size then i would definitely get one (and i know it'll cost more than an ipad). You've got to love the wacom stylus.
Rocket Surgeon.
I wouldn't call netbooks a fad and it's clear you haven't used one recently. Netbooks still sold about 35 million last year, the same as the year prior. Personally, I still see them every where here in Southern CA -- I can't say the same for tablets.
As for power, my friend's new ACER 11.6" netbook using the latest dual core Atom is noticeably faster than my any of my Cortex 9 based tablets when performing similar tasks. Early versions of the Atom were quite weak, but that's changed, just as the ARM procs have really improved.
And your comment about tablets being actually useful, as if netbooks were not, perplexes me. Yes, there are some things that are nice about a tablet, I own 4 of them for development. But when compared to a netbook -- which is basically a small notebook -- tablets still have a LONG way to go.
As for tablets and being useful, I consider my ASUS Transformer to be the most useful and that's only because it has a keyboard attachment with 2 full size USB ports. This basically makes is a "lesser" netbook, but with the consumption and pick-up strengths of a tablet -- the screen is super easy to attach and detach.
Anyways, to all their own, but it seems like you need to go out and experience the latest devices.
Will further hype the tablet craze.... however, I am very curious as to what they could add to a tablet now to make it more appealing to everyone else (people who type) which is how I could see the Acer CEO saying such a thing... but since Google/Apple/Samsung have and will keep investing in tablets, I wouldn't be surprised to see the hype at least stay around until something better comes out. (folder pcs? I forget how you refer to them, basically 2 tablets that fold together... pretty much like a laptop >_)
You know what else I find fascinating? Apple products do extremely well in recessions... I went to the mall the other day in King of Prussia and it was like a ghost town EXCEPT for the Apple Store which was about to bust from so many people fiddling with their products...
because anything I can do on my iPad I can do on my laptop. Please don't call out the touchscreen, its only one method of input and highly annoying at times for its lack of accuracy. I pick up my laptop at work and go to any meeting I want with it, I can be wired or wireless, it doesn't matter. I quick and EASILY type out an email or meeting notes. I can bt import a picture if I want, having used a smart phone to capture the diagrams on a board or presentation if not presented in another format.
I have my iPad useful only when I knew I would only need to review information, come time to adjust or enter new information and I found myself wanting my laptop. Ultrathin laptops work well, they just might not have Starbucks cred but who cares.
Then there are the meetings where neither is allowed but I am allowed to keep my phone, which amazingly can do many of the tasks I needed the iPad for.
A device is only as magical as you think it is, far too many people grant magical abilities to a new toy to justify it, either purposefully or subconsciously ignoring the fact they could do it better before or better another way.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What scares me about all the hype is not that we'll end up using tablets, its that I won't be able to use my computer they way I want to as easily. I've owned several smart phones (including an iPhone), I've used a iPad, I have laptops and I get the usefulness of all of them. But the people who like to think that eventually the computer will have no keyboard scare me. Not because its a good thing to not have a keyboard, but because the alternatives suck. I can type fast and I need to be able to type fast and accurately for what I like to do. So I prefer using a desktop most of the time. What I don't want is for the rest of the population to decide for me that keyboards don't need to exist anymore because a touch keyboard on a small display is good enough for them. Because what would happen in that case is that you'll end up not seeing them on the shelves at stores, keyboard designs will get worse and their prices will increase because less of them will be made. On top of that applications will not be designed around use of the keyboard as much anymore. And then you have designer/coder hipsters who get off on making keyboards without what they would call "geek keys".
Tablets are really not as useless as some skeptics are claiming. Mobile phones, the harbinger of tablet computing, proved that people like/want/prefer touch screen interfaces. Laptops with touchscreens are nothing new; we've had tablet laptops for more years than I can count, but the tablets that are currently booming in the market are possibly because of technological advances which allow devices that are lightweight, use less power, are more powerful, smaller/slimmer, have nice screens, multitouch, integrated cameras, and so on. It's an effective combination that is starting to become more affordable.
Does everyone need one? I guess not, but they make great entertainment devices, and they can be used for a number of productivity applications. If you like to write a lot you really do need a keyboard, but for those times there are tablets with wireless or attachable keyboards that pretty much solve that problem. I can definitely see these things merging with "foldable laptops with touchscreens," but at the same time nixing the keyboard just gives it a slight edge on portability and ease of use.
People use tablets for pretty much the same things we've been seeing people use them for in Star Trek decades ago. It's a device that you can easily grab and go, use to look up information, check messages, carry digital books on, watch videos, carry it to and fro, and show things on it to others. You can carry it with you everywhere, throw it in a bag, use it to snap photos of things and upload them somewhere, take voip (voice and video) conferencing calls, and who knows.. maybe one day touchscreen keyboards will be ergonomic enough to actually type on, although as a touch typist myself, those days seem far off.
Tablets right now have amazing games and they're great to watch movies on (normally I can't stand portable movie devices).
Also, I've worked in companies that needed tablet devices. For example, we had many workers that had to walk around the building and scan/photograph items and look them up in a database, where they would have to manipulate records for the item. We already had the database and network infrastructure in place, but we needed tablets badly. One employ was carting a full sized laptop around, while others had to visit terminals set up all over the place, and other employees were equipped with cheap digital cameras that they'd have to take back to their desks in order to upload the photos to the database.
In other jobs I worked with people who always had to carry briefcases with them full of documents, notes, references, and things like that which simply could have been digitized, but it would have been awkward for them to hold a laptop when doing things like delivering speeches or having ad hoc meetings without meeting facilities. Some of them did used laptops but it was a sluggish and inelegant solution.
Let's face it... tablets are not workstations; they're not trying to replace your workstation or laptop (ie mobile workstation). They are excellent utility devices. I can even imagine that one day it will be common for living rooms to have tablets that are used as control consoles for household functions like controlling lights, the thermostat, your tivo, etc. Kids can use tablets to read storybooks, interact with educational material, carry lessons and homework too and from school, and so on. If laptops suck at doing these things now it's because the software isn't developed yet, but the hardware has pretty much arrived.
Of course one of the advantages of a tablet for the hospital industry is that it has no physical keyboard - something that most people who have not used a tablet just don't seem to get - and thus no section of the device that is highly prone to gathering germs and crud and also pretty impossible to clean well. With say an iPad, you can just wipe it off and be fairly confident its a lot cleaner than say a laptop or notebook of comparable power would be.
My wife just got an iPad and already I can see that its going to be very effective as a tool, plus a lot of fun to use.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
my father, who is a bit of a luddite, absolutely loves his iPad. Indeed, he uses it much more than he uses his desktop computer!
He was looking for a portable computer to use for taking notes as secretary for a community organization he volunteered to help. I was trying to steer him toward the MacBook Air, but suggested he take a look at the iPad as an alternative. To my surprise, he chose the iPad. His reasoning being, if he didn't like it, he could always return it within Apple's trial period and trade it for an Air.
It took him a few weeks to get used to using it. Once he got the hang of it, it became a vital tool. He uses it for most of his email needs. He keeps it on the end table next to him while watching the news and uses it to call up maps or supplement information an whatever story is being reported. He reads more news on his iPad than he does on the newspaper, and has already read a few books as well.
And, yes, he does use it to keep the minutes during meetings with the community organization, which was the reason he bought it in the first place.
Tablet computers a bubble? No! The market tablet computers serve is those people who don't like or are not comfortable using a computer. Or, for those that just don't need a computer. Considering that Acer has so far failed to bring a successful tablet computer to market, such comments come across as "sour grapes".
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Just like with every other technology Apple has repackaged, making it shiny/popular.
The world has ADD, shiny things can only hold their attention for so long before they get bored and try to find something else.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Why does everyone here assume that an average user does the same things as they do on their personal computing devices. Most users are happy using gadgets purely for consumption, a function at which tablets excel. btw I can swype faster than I can type.
...and I wish you would pipe down about it, so that the industry would keep pumping out hardware and driving down prices until they reach my "impulse price". I mean come on, stop tablet-shop-blockin'!
Never mind that Wang can't reach them...
Do you have ESP?
I can't use it when I commute
Commuting is the perfect place to use them. [...] on the train
In the United States, some parts more than others, public transit is subpar or nonexistent. For example, Citilink buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, don't run at all on nights, Saturday evenings, Sundays, or holidays, and they run only once an hour when they do run.
The main thing the "consumption only" argument misses is that most people only use their computers for consuption.
Consumption is tuberculosis.
Sure, someone may buy a computer with the intent to use it to view works and information created by someone else. But if the computer is also useful as a tool for creating works, then perhaps the user may be tempted to try his hand one day at creating. The leap from viewing to creating isn't so easy for people who own only a device for viewing.
My bank has had to produce an IOS application for IOS users yet the mobile and normal sites are lightning fast on my Iconia
As I understand it, online banking applications for smartphones allow the user to use the device's camera to photograph the front and back of a check (or cheque, depending on country) and deposit it. How does one do this with the mobile or normal web site? Since when does HTML provide APIs to (ask the user and) turn on a device's camera?
http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/
n/t
Typed on my tablet, from the restroom.
Since having silverlight in a browser is totally unnecessary to use Netflix on a mobile device.
The HP Touchpad (hi, remember me? The main story providing context to the discussion) is a mobile device.
The Touchpad has no Netflix client.
Hence, your statement is incorrect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When people buy televisions, do they expect it to create and edit TV shows with it?
Because that's exactly what we're talking about when it comes to tablets vs. full fledged PC's: Content consumption vs. content creation.
Since most people are consumers, it only follows that they're choosing the best tool to fit their needs.
And I would not trade it for an Ipad any day. Let the douchebag carry their symbol my Tablet is not a fashion statement it a light weight productivity device.
quote
"We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them."
unquote
I thought like that but I keep reading of some forward thinking firm buying a ton of them for their employees like the airline that just bought 11,000 iPads for their pilots. RINSE and REPEAT
The problem with competing against the iPad is no one wants a Tablet, they have seen and want an iPad. Then one day after they score an iPad for themselves, dozens of their friends see them using it and a light bulb goes off in their heads that they could use something like that if they could just get one. The demand for an iPad exponentially increases that day.
HP cut the price of their discontinued hardware to $99, Apple a couple of days later cut the price of a newly refurbished iPad to $299 from their online web store. Would you if you want an iPad be happy with a piece of junk for $99 which is slow with no apps or a real iPad for only $200 more? Again Apple sold all they had at that price just when folks were thinking maybe a $99 no name tablet would be would be a good deal.
!
or you would note the scavenger frenzy over the hp touchpad. people still paying way too much, but consumers are tired of being gouged on tablets.