Is Tablet Success Bound To Their Crackability?

Hitting the front page for the first time, rippeltippel writes "The Economist recently published an article about HP quitting the tablet market. Nothing new I said, until I read 'the announcement showed that the firm had finally seen the light about the tablet market — namely, that there is no such thing.' But are the games closed with the iPad as a clear winner? Possibly not: 'hackers have embraced the Nook, "rooting" its underlying Linux software ... so it can run many more applications from Google's online app store and elsewhere.' A review on Amazon's Kindle tablet page reads: 'They've cracked it — this is the future.' Can it possibly be read as 'Crackable tablets are the future of tablets?'" Smartphone vendors seem to have gotten the message: users want to control the software on their phones. It is a shame that Palm/HP, who were one of the only vendors open from the start, more or less lost the game. Unfortunately it seems that tablet and ebook reader vendors have yet to get the message.

Comments

Doubt it. Limited hardware means limited software.

[Kenja]

What most people want from a tablet is email, web and angry birds. Anything beyond that is just gravy. Frankly, I dont see much in the way of serious software for tablets due to hardware limitations. This is the same problem thats plagued the form factor since its inception back in the late 80s. Too much simply requires a keyboard and mouse. A tablet and touch interface works best for viewing content, not creating.