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Dell Kills Streak 7, Bails On Android Tablets
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Network World: "Dell has yanked the Dell Streak 7 tablet computer from its online stores, quietly acknowledging the failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers as the company redirects its tablet focus to combination work/play products. Word of the Streak 7's disappearance follows by a few months the death of the Streak 5, which debuted in summer 2010. The dual-core processor-powered Dell Streak 7 became available in January, marketed as a 4G wireless tablet via T-Mobile's network. Now Dell is directing would-be Streak buyers to Android and Windows Phone smartphones, and pushing a line of Windows Phone tablets for business."
They should have sold it in Zune Brown and then you could have been the kewl kid on the block with a new Brown Streak!
I'd give them more credit than just a commodity PC maker. They have made some significant acquisitions that run a lot of data centers. Equallogic is a fairly big player in mid-size data centers. They also picked up a fairly sizeable software distribution house in ASAP. Dell's problem has been getting away from what they were once superior at: Support. They still sell support, but don't seem to back it up like they used to, and a lot of people are starting to shy away from that.
The Streak7 is an awful device. It was laggy and had a painfully low-resolution display (800x480 on a 7".) Trying to continue selling the Streak 5 (woefully obsolete, strange form factor, never found a niche) and the Streak 7 (overall crappy device) at this point would be stupid. Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with it.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2612610/dell-were-not-backing-away-from-android
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
This quarter the iPad is hitting 65% market share. That's a lot, but remember it started the year in the high 90s. The only thing that might keep Android from being the top tablet platform in 2013 is Windows 8, and that's a long shot.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
So basically what you're asking for is a present from tablet makers. Why would they go into debt to give you a gift?
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Its all in the price. Apparently a tablet that is worth about a quarter of an ipad sells really good at a quarter of an ipad price. Trying to sell "not as good as an ipad" for same or higher price doesn't work so well.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And Android marketshare went from 34% to 26%. iPad is also expected to grow back to 75% share.
> I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Let me revise and extend you remark to make it more accurate:
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets at close to iPad prices.
Google has been playing games by withholding the source and access to the Market to all of the no-name products while ensuring all of the brand name ones keep their prices out of 'commodity' territory. Now that 4.0 is available perhaps they will allow the clones into the Market and prices to seek their own level. We shall then see if consumers are interested in Android tablets at half the price of an iProduct.
Personally I have zero interest in them at current pricing. They cost a lot more than a netbook yet have less stuff inside and no MIcrosoft tax to explain the higher price. And while the form factor is interesting, the price they pay is being less generally useful than a netbook or laptop. But get em down under $200 for fully equipped ones (GPS, BT, WiFi-n, camera, 1GHz+ CPU, good display) and I suspect uptake will pick up. But the Android forces have pretty much lost this Xmas selling season because there ain't no way products based on 4.0 will make it to stores in quantity this year.
Democrat delenda est
Like Samsung (Galaxy Tab). Or Acer.
Are you kidding? Some are predicting the Kindle fire to sell 3.9 million this quarter http://recombu.com/news/amazons-kindle-fire-sales-second-place-to-ipad-set-to-vaporise-other-android-tab-sales_M15995.html, and others are predicting Apple to sell in the order of 13 million iPads http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-28/tech/30449262_1_ipads-piper-jaffray-apple-stores .100,000 Xooms is less than a rounding error. To put it in perspective, Windows mobile 7 has more of the phone market than any of the non-kindle android tablets have of the tablet market.
Lol that's some Kool Aid your offering. Its been estimated there are 350,000 Android devices being activated each day. While that number seems high to me, it wouldn't surprise me if its mostly on the mark; http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2011/03/07/in-the-us-android-is-now-the-number-one-smartphone-os/ .
My karma is not a Chameleon.
On a site with incredible ignorance about business, this one is exceptionally ignorant. If you think that Apple is making a lot of more from the App Store, you've been listening to random IT fanboys instead of paying attention to the business facts. The App Store is hugely important to Apple's ecosystem, but there's very, very little profit in it, as compared to hardware profit. You're just plain wrong about this.
People who buy Android are typically people upgrading from a feature phone to a cheap smartphone.
You're half right. While it is true that consumers have an almost complete lack of interest in Android they have an equal lack of interest in IOS. Consumers want gadgets but only if the gadgets high techiness is able to get out of the way and the consumer can do cool things without knowing too much. This is where IOS excels and Android has faltered...until now. While handset OEMs have focused on prettying up the interface to distinguish themselves Barnes & Noble flat out covered up the underlying Android base and focused on User Experience as much as UI. They also hit a price point that was palatable for more of the masses by leaving out the ubiquitous front and rear cameras and a few other bells and whistles and not skimping on the screen or touch interface. Of course the Android community likes to point out how easily hackable the device is but I'm reasonably sure total sales were not overly impacted by this fact. The success of the NC got Amazon's attention and Bezos & Co. have now launched the Kindle Fire. For all intents and purposes a BlackBerry PlayBook without cameras and running Android. The Fire has taken the NC concept and gone even further. By tying the Fire to amazon's cloud services they seek to capture the kind of repeat business Apple has using iTunes. For /. aficionados these devices are toys but for Joe Average these are just what the Dr. ordered. And at $199 entry point they are right at impulse buy territory.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Apple's revenues from iTunes is far lower than the revenues from the hardware. Apple simply does not run iTunes for huge profits, and if it wasn't to sell hardware, would promptly abandon it.
I mean, 30% revenue means less than 30% profit margin after expenses (servers, hosting free content, iCloud, payment processing, etc). I think Apple only took around $1.5B profit from iTunes, and that includes apps, music, books and movies.
I believe the device (iPod, iOS) profit was 20 times that in the same period. Even Mac profit was an order of magnitude higher. than that. It's all in the Apple revenue filings. iTunes just doesn't make more than pocket change for Apple. There's not much of a loss Apple can take on hardware to be made up through iTunes.
Amazon's selling hardware to sell content. Apple's selling content in order to sell hardware (has been true since 2003 when the iTunes Music Store opened). The two can't have more opposite business models. (And Google's offering stuff for free to sell ads). You can see it in the device breakdowns - Apple's hardware really only costs $300 or less to make, while Amazon's basically selling at cost.
And HTC, Samsung, LG, etc seem to be doing fine selling hardware, as does Apple.
The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is they sell "the whole experience" - devices with the ability to get content easily. Why they offer content may vary, but they know if they make it convenient, people will buy (it's how iTunes became the dominant force in music sales) and gives a lot of legitimacy to the stuff. (People back then accused Apple of enabling music piracy - Apple proved the music industry was Doing It Wrong(tm)).
The other content with hardware guys in the game are Barnes and Noble and Kobo. I don't think the Nook Color is sold at a loss given how B&N seems to let that tablet be hacked trivially.
And nevermind the "success" of such greats like RIM (Blackberry App World), HP (remember WebOS? They had an app store?) who also mixed the hardware-with-content offerings.
tl;dr - Apple doesn't make much money off iTunes - see their last earnings report and hardware sales consistently outdo iTunes sales by wide margins.
However, Apple makes so much money off of the App store that they could undoubtedly sell the hardware at a loss and still profit overall. They just don't need to - at least not at this point.
According to the Q3 earning reports, iTunes generates 5% of the profits, with the iPad hardware sales generating 21% . iTunes pfofits are about half music so lets be generous and say 2.5% of the company profits are app sales. Given 47% of the sales being iPhones, and asuming equal ratios, that means about 1.117% of the company profits are due to iPad app sales.
Selling the iPad at a loss would cut an insane amount of profit and generate nearly no extra income, not to mention that a lower price point encourages people with singier pockets to buy it, meaning the app sale percentage will likely go further down.
So apple does need to sell the iPad at a profit.
How can Dell, HP, Motorola, HTC compete in this scenario, when the only thing they can make money off of is the hardware?
Those companies may get a chance once Windows 8 comes out. If managed properly, it may fare much better than the phone offerings. Microsoft will have office for Windows 8 Metro. That alone will surely encourage many consumers that shy from tablets due to productivity concerns, a market Android Tablets does not cover.
You are getting this 65% market share from android manufacturers SHIPPING numbers. Those tablets aren't being sold. Who cares if Android manufacturers shipped 35% of the tablets out there when almost none (aside from the fire) were sold?
Whoa! What? Dell had an Android tablet for sale?
While Samsung and a whole bunch of other companies have Android devices flying off the shelves, Dell seems unable to do the same. Curious and curiouser.
This a joke? According to the NPD, Samsung has only sold 192,000 tablets in the US (16% of a 1.2 million non apple tablet market.) For such a large country, buying so many ipads, I would say 192,000 is not exactly flying off the shelf.
Mind you, got to give it to Samsung that they at lest manage to sell that amount. Dell didnt even sell enough to show up in the top 5 list (http://www.npdgroup.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_111122b.) IF Dell happens to be 6th at 8% that would mean they sold 96,000 tablets tops.
There are a lot of Android devices being activated, and OP was being stupid by conflating Android phones and Android tablets, but let's not be disingenuous in the opposite direction: Android tablets have not exactly set the world on fire yet. Android on tablets needs a bit more time to mature, and for efficient supply-chains to be built by the various manufacturers.
I hope Michael Dell take his own advice..
What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I read the title as "Dell Streak Kills 7, Bails On Android Tablets" - and here I was expecting to read about some kind of story about a Lithium battery explosion.
-=- I tried going insane, and it was fun for a while, but I got bored and decided to go sane. -=-
GP was making assumptions about how "smart" Android buyers are. Most of them aren't nerds. Most of them are ordinary people buying the non-fruit-flavored smartphone platform that doesn't cost an enormous amount.
Find where I said there was a "problem."
Dell had the best tech support. It was what differentiated Dell from the rest. Then Dell hired a management consulting firm to come in and see if there was a way they could improve the business. The consultant's advice was to be more like Gateway Computers and cut back on support. The result went straight to the bottom line and the stock price shot up and management and everybody made fortunes. Anybody with a clue saw what was happening and sold out. The stock price has never recovered and you know what Dell's reputation is like.
If you're going to have a rebuttal, citations are going to be needed. It basically sounded like you said "nuh uh!".
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
This is why people aren't as willing to buy from companies like Dell as opposed to Apple. A few quarters of less than stellar sales and they bail on the whole market and you're left with an unsupported device. Happened with the Zune, HP's tablet, some very good mp3 players of yore. And to add insult to injury, these companies expect to be able to charge the same for their devices as Apple does.
Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.
By call them "cheap smartphones" you invoke images of flimsy feature-less hunks of plastic that can barely qualify for the smart- prefix.
Try using "less expensive" next time, the tablet and smartphone markets are flooded with chinese knockoffs and 3rd shift runs that very much qualify for the "cheap" designation. It's best to draw a very clear line between what you mean and what they make.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Or perhaps they want a physical keyboard (a friend of mine has chosen Android over iPhone for exactly this reason).
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Asus is selling 300k units per month of theirs. Lack of interest? Just because it doesn't have a pre-existing audience that would happily buy it even if it was a turd in a white box with Apple logo on it, doesn't mean there's no interest.
Streak failed because it was just plain not good. It shipped with Android 2.2 (not even 2.3), and they have only started rolling out Honeycomb in October - while all their competitors had Honeycomb tablets selling for months.
The Nook Touch is not a tablet - it's a book reader. Maybe what they really wanted was Nook Tablets. They might be kind of disappointed if they are expecting an iPad alternative and end up with an e-reader instead. Just sayin'.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Amazon has the superior marketing position, so they will probably do very well with that Fire product. Which is kind of a shame, really, because the like-priced Nook Color is better device, and for $50 more the Nook Tablet is far superior.
I had kind of decided I was going to plop down $150 for a refurbished NC myself, but then I compared it to the Nook Tablet at the B&N, and I don't think I'd be as happy with the Color. If it wasn't for the locked bootloader I'd probably have one by now.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
If you think 350k/day is high imagine what you will think of the current number... 550k/day!
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/android-now-seeing-550000-activations-per-day/
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Who all saw this coming? Dell has to constantly try and play catchup with everyone else in the industry, it's pathological at this point. They ruined their reputation for having reliable workstations, they ruined their Gold Tech Support when they started outsourcing it to themselves (the new "Pro Support doesn't state the guy on the other end has to be certified A+ or MCP, just 'English Speaking'"), etc etc. What else do they have at this point but to try to hop on the next big thing and pray they can accidentally do it better than everyone else?
They need an Executive Enema. Get rid of these guys in suits desperate to have their name on the "next big thing(tm)" and maybe the ones that are left will be able to actually get some work done.
I beg to differ..they *can* be a full blown tablet.
You root them and put cyanogenmod7 on them and voila...great little tablet.
Isn't the e-ink screen going to make it painful for a lot of functions, though?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Where's your evidence to back this?
If Asus Transformers weren't shipping, then why was it impossible to order one that wasn't being price-scalped for at least 2-3 months after release? Even the traditional "non-scalping" vendors like Amazon were selling for $20-30 above MSRP.
Even after devices stopped being unobtainium, accessories were selling like crazy - even in June it was impossible to find chargers for the device.
Similarly - you are utterly and completely deluded if you think that a manufacturer would keep shipping tablets that weren't selling, and that retailers would keep these devices on the shelves. If you seriously think this is possible, I have one word for you: Touchpad.
Do you REALLY think Samsung is stupid enough to release two new tablet variants (the Tab 8.9 and the Tab 7.0 Plus) if the Tab 10.1 isn't selling well? If there's so little demand for the Tab 10.1, why is Apple so afraid of it?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Those are mostly phones, not tablets. I actually quite like most Android phones, but the tablet experience has not been a good one (I'm on my second, now, a Xoom, after the failure that was the Optimus Pad). Android fans need to be honest with themselves: the product was rushed out the door by Google, and made worse by OEM incompetence/indifference/opportunism.
I am hoping ICS helps out, but I was not at all impressed with Honeycomb, to the point where I thought the PlayBook was a better experience for casual use.
--srj/mmv
Here it is in handy picture form. Anyone who thinks Apple sells devices cheap to make it up on software and content is grossly misinformed.
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Here, in handy picture form.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My bad...I read the parent as using a Nook Color...not the eInk thing....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Fuck this absolutely stupid argument.
Do you really think all those tablet manufacturers make money from showing big numbers? No, they make money from selling, and if it doesn't sell, they pull it, just like Dell did. The same argument was raised about Android smartphones, but oddly enough we don't hear it all that much nowadays.
In making your rant against Android fanboys (apparently anyone who doesn't have a problem with their Android phone is a fanboy...) you come across as the worst stereotype of an Apple fanboy.
When you show me one Android device that doesn't have OBVIOUS UI lag in scrolling, then ... and ONLY then will I even consider the idea that Android may eventually one day be comparable to iOS
Really? So it doesn't matter whether your device loses all signal when you hold it wrong, or if it churns through its battery in under a day after a software update, or if it prevents you from installing any apps that compete with those published by its maker, no, none of these matter. The sole criteria on which to judge the worthiness of a mobile platform is a minor graphical bug that has no real bearing on usability.
And if anybody claims that actually, they haven't seen that particular bug on their device, they're an ignorant fanboy whose opinion can be discounted.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
My bad...I read the parent as using a Nook Color...not the eInk thing....
Ya I actually researched it a little. Cyanogenmod doesn't currently have a version that will run on a Touch at all. There was some interest in the forums, but even more comments wondering how useful it would even be...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...
Folks in the PC market were trained for years that "yeah an intel mac is just a PC but you pay twice the cost of the hardware to get the OSX software".
OK... for the sake of this argument I'll say I believe that. Personally I think it's wrong, but its a very popular viewpoint. I'll run with it and pretend.
So, the $400 ipad comes out. I've been trained that means the hardware costs $200 and you're paying $200 for the fancy apple software. OK here comes this android thing that is all free and open and stuff. That means I'll still be paying $200 for the hardware, but it'll be free software like linux and so I expect to pay $200 for this android tablet. What you say? List price $600 for the android tablet? F it, I'm not paying any more than $250 for it at most, I'm getting a "fairer" deal with the ipad.
Actually this is a pretty good question. How come ipads are not dramatically more expensive than android tablets? A kindle Fire should cost about as much as a "Regular old Kindle".. right? Its just a different software load, at least to a non-technical user. But no, its like twice as much... F that, I'm either buying a plain Kindle or a full fledged ipad. Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Dell doesn't know what they are doing, aren't making the KINDS of Android devices that people want, and not at the prices people want.
Sorry, but that doesn't make "failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers" an accurate statement. The correct statement is "Dell fails at figuring out how to make compelling Android devices that people want". Big difference.
The XPS is a big, thick, ugly, hunk of plastic shit. It's a fucking Dell man.
Yes, you can get a thicker, plastic Dell for less than a Macbook Pro. This has always been true. If you start looking at the thinner, lighter laptops that are made of real metal, the ones that are actually crafted to compete with Apple's laptops instead of with the generic Winblowz hunks of creaking shit out there, they cost the same or more than the Apples. If you add in the cost of Windows Ultimate (IE something with almost all the functionality of OS X instead of a neutered starter OS with training wheels) you will exceed the Apple option in cost.