The (Mostly) Sad Fates of 32 First-Generation iPad Rivals

harrymcc writes "Back in August of 2010, I rounded up 32 tablets — existing, announced, and rumored — that weren't the iPad. So much has happened to tablets since then that I decided to revisit my list and look at what happened to all 32 contenders. The results aren't pretty, but they do provide plenty of evidence that competing with Apple was far harder than most companies expected."

Comments

Asus Transformer TF101

[symbolset]

One of those tablets became the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. It's a gorgeous little Honeycomb tablet (currently 3.2.1) with IPS widescreen display and a docking keyboard option. It uses the dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, and has a selection of ports you're unlikely to find all of on most other tablets: SDHC, microSDHC, miniHDMI, dual USB. Build quality is great and the color and texture are very nice. It has Flash and Netflix now, the full Google Android experience. The speakers are just awful, but there's really nothing bad about it otherwise. On Amazon 500+ people have given it an average of 4 stars. It's not been discounted much ever off its original $400, and appears to be selling quite well. I bought one and couldn't be happier about my return on investment - no fiddling with alternative flashing and rooting. It just works.

The next-gen version is likely to be one of the first quad-core "Kal-El" Tegra 3 tablets out this year, and rumor has it the one dock will work for both and battery life will be even better than the current 8-16 hours.

So not all of these were disastrous it appears. At least somebody got it right. I hear the Acer Iconia Tab is doing well too at its new $400 price point. Yes, the vast majority of the initial round of iPad challengers were quite wide of the mark. But we seem to be narrowing in on a family of choices that can move a lot of units at their various price points. Amazon's Kindle Fire looks to be interesting at $200.

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[jmac_the_man]

Seconded. I'm a huge fan of the TF-101, and it's amazing how every time one of these HURF DURF NOBODY BEATS IPAD articles comes out, somebody always mentions the Transformer. It's a shame that the earthquake screwed up their initial production run so badly and that Asus didn't market it the way they could have. I know I've sold at least two people on it by just popping the screen off and handing it to them to show them a photo or something.

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[BlueStraggler]

Honeycomb 3.2.1 IPS widescreen docking dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 1GB RAM SDHC miniHDMI dual USB Flash Android no rooting quad-core Kal-El Tegra 3

This post explains everything you need to know about why Slashdot simply doesn't get tablet computing, and probably never will.

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[marsu_k]

Honeycomb 3.2.1 IPS widescreen docking dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 1GB RAM SDHC miniHDMI dual USB Flash Android no rooting quad-core Kal-El Tegra 3

This post explains everything you need to know about why Slashdot simply doesn't get tablet computing, and probably never will.

Yes, I guess we should all be satisfied with "4:3 is the best aspect ratio ever, we don't need any extra connectivity, and if the media is not available in iTunes we shall not want to watch it".

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[jo_ham]

Again, more evidence of slashdot simply not getting it.

When you get the user experience right, the hardware doesn't matter. It's not just "marketing" and "being duped into buying inferior hardware" here - the iPad works very well for what it does. Companies that try to market on "it has a faster processor than the iPad, so it's better!" are missing the point and aren;t going to attract the audience.

Obviously hardware plays a part, but the days of "the CPU is faster, so it's better!" are gone.

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[whisper_jeff]

I believe the point that was being made, which you seemed to have missed, is that the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of users don't care how much RAM their tablet (or phone) has. They don't care what processor it has. They do no care. Sorry to all the geeks out there who think that stuff is vitally important but the reality is that it is not. What does matter is that the device works, works well, and that the user enjoys using it. That simple. And, until geeks start to figure that out, companies are going to continue releasing products to compete with the iPad that have superior specs but end up failing utterly on the market - consumers don't care about specs.

Re:Asus Transformer TF101

[ozmanjusri]

I believe the point that was being made, which you seemed to have missed, is that the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of users don't care how much RAM their tablet (or phone) has.

And those people don't read or post on Slashdot.

They still love Transformers though. I started out using mine to take notes at client meetings, and I'll swear the thing is as infectious as the flu - every time I go back to those places, half a dozen people will be waving Eeepads at me saying "Look, I got one too!"

That's why I waited

[markdavis]

I waited patiently for the Xoom WiFi before buying a tablet. I am glad I did. A lot of pre-Xoom products looked interesting, but lacked one or more of the following: solid OS, large name manufacturer, real (capacitive) touch screen, good compute power, decent amount of memory and storage.

It was too expensive... but so was and is the iPad. I didn't want an iPad, and now the Xoom is $100 less and LOTS of Tegra II, 10" honeycomb tablets are available. Perhaps too many! And Amazon's recent product intro and the success of the Touchpad firesale has FINALLY shaken up the market and prices are starting to drop rapidly.

Re:That's why I waited

[CharlyFoxtrot]

They are definitely getting smaller margins, but they aren't getting the volume they need to make it worthwhile (lower prices to not necessarily equate to higher volume.) Report from back in April :

"Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdry estimates that Motorola Mobility has manufactured between 500,000 and 800,000 Xooms, but has sold only 5 to 15 percent of them. Best case scenario then, according to Chowdry, is that Motorola has sold 120,000 Xooms; worse case scenario, it’s sold just 25,000."

And the Xoom is generally regarded as the best of the lot.

How long will these companies keep trying to get into a market where they aren't making any money ? Slashing prices reeks of desperation especially since components haven't gotten noticeably cheaper and they aren't making the volume to benefit from economies of scale. Like I said the best bet for real competition is probably the new Kindles. Amazon can sell these with an extremely low margin (or even a subsidized price) because unlike all the other tablet hopefuls they can make their money on media sales.

Re:iPad's success is simplicity

[The Good Reverend]

They're not really "iTaxes" as the iPad is the same price or cheaper than almost all alternatives.

I love mine. And my non-techie wife loves it. And our 5-year old daughter loves it. That's really what was important to me in my household. I have my servers and plenty of other tech toys to tinker with - the iPad was perfect for the whole household, though.

Re:iPad's success is simplicity

[Pieroxy]

Same here. I have two 45U bays in my garage. a few servers in those bays. A Linux desktop. HDHomerun in the attic. Media centers all across the house. And I bought my wife an iPad. Everyone's happy, except those people that think that owning an iPad makes you a stupid moronic cretin. But I don't give a rat's ass about them, so all is well in the end.

UI is one component of good engineering

[Brannon]

iPhones and iPads are solidly engineered all the way around (hardware and software) and [yes] targeted at a non-technical audience, but still quite usable by nerds.

I don't understand the condescending attitude that many nerds have about iOS devices and their users.

Re:UI is one component of good engineering

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Nerds are another form of hipster. If something is mainstream, they start hating it to make themselves appear to have more sophisticated tastes.

And yes, I am speaking from experience. I tend to be overly critical of popular movies just to look cool. I like to think I've toned that down in recent years.

Re:UI is one component of good engineering

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

If nerds could really detect idiocy there would be no flame wars.

Re:Of course it is.

[HuguesT]

You are not being honest with yourself. Apple has well and truly moved out of the fanbois base and now sells to the masses. Non-tech people totally love it. They barely have to do any marketing about the iPad, it's been very hard to get these past few months, it's been literally flying out of the shelves.

The iPad is good, face it. Eventually the PC industry might make a few good contenders but right now they suck. Win7 is not up to the task, Android is in between states waiting for 4.0 to come out and finally merge the smartphone and tablet versions with a reasonable "market". WebOS is a goner with HP calling it quits.

I understand you not liking Apple's products. No one is forcing you to buy them, you probably don't need them anyway. But you have to admit Apple has caught the PC industry on the backfoot with this one.

Also the MacBook Air, I totally want that one.

Re:Of course it is.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

You are not being honest with yourself. Apple has well and truly moved out of the fanbois base and now sells to the masses. Non-tech people totally love it.

Not only are they selling to the masses (if you don't think selling tens to hundreds of millions of devices is mass market you're seriously deluded), but they are turning them into loyal customers. The iPhone has by far the highest customer retention rate around ("UBS: iPhone’s 89% retention rate crushes competition; next closest is HTC at 39%") and they continue to lead in PC customer satisfaction figures ("Apple scored 87 points, ahead of HP with a result of 78, Dell with 77, Acer also with 77 and Compaq with 75. [...] Apple holds the highest score on record for the eighth consecutive year.") They're obviously doing something right.

Re:iPad's success is simplicity

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Apologies for the long rant. I've seen the 'damn overpriced Apple' screed often enough that I've thought about it a bit.

Unless you're a programmer, you don't really know how much effort that simplicity takes. Your thinking that simplicity is a cheap trick is missing the point. It's not that Apple doesn't see all the good features out there, it's that they wait and spend many hours honing things before they see the light of day. Deleting features takes guts, it's telling a programmer you can't do your fun thing. It's keeping to a list of things that are integrated, even though checkbox marketers (Microsoft is the best example here) try to say you're inferior and you're getting nailed in product reviews. But, every feature that you have is actually usable.

You also seem dismissive of their tech. Apple has managed to put a hybrid microkernel/UNIX device with OpenGL graphics, 4 radios (CDMA, GSM, Bluetooth, Wifi), an inhouse designed CPU, and a capacitive touchscreen in wifes pocket. And as someone whose brain isn't wired for tech, she loves it. If you go out to a cellphone store now, you'll see many phones that copy that formula. For a desktop/laptop company to take over the direction of phone design in a few years says something about the quality of their engineers and designers. You seem to confuse simple with stupid, or rather simple on the interface with simple everywhere. It's actually a mistake Microsoft made with the Zune, and old versions of Windows CE. You also seem to make a mistake many people make where they think everyone is just like them but is missing some fact that would make them agree with you. Not everyone is just like you.

As far as the 'Apple Tax', you've evidently never taken economics. The price in the field is determined more or less by supply and demand. Every vendor would love to sell you their stuff for more. It's called profit margin. No one is ever forced to pay it. Consumers choose to. Only the vendors whose products are loved get to charge a decent margin. If they're not loved, no one will pay their prices. So, Apple charges iTaxes? Then, no one must be buying these things that are overpriced? Apple seems to be moving product fairly well. Only iPhones get to charge margin, and very similar specced android phones can not, because they're not quite the same. Even near-WIntel spec laptops with just MacOSX as a differentiator are getting sold. There must be something in that secret sauce of iOS and MacOSX that makes people want to pay more for them, even though Macs don't run Windows programs. It's all that effort you don't see, all that simplicity that makes iOS/MacOSX just work for most people. We have a macbook, and the wife's plan says to replace the aging Windows machine with some iMac once it finally kicks over. She's no fanboy (err, girl). Macs just are easier for her. And I'm a UNIX programmer, who ran FreeBSD for various jobs (besides Linux, Solaris, etc) and I'm low level enough to have done driver work (which shipped in a UNIX kernel) and I like the iMac idea. MacOS does quite well if it's simple enough for her to use, yet powerful enough for me.

As someone who has been on Macs since 89 or so, I can assure you there was no fanboyism about the Performa days or System 7.1.1. or the 'the Pepsi ex-CEO can design and move computers, right?' fiascos. Apple had their nadir, and they built up since then. There was no reality distortion field back then, they made hard choices, killed projects, (Copeland, Rhapsody, Pink, Taligent, etc) and started slowly building Apple to where it is.