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Target's Sales Floors Are Switching From Apple To Android Devices (gizmodo.com)
After three years of Apple products, Target is moving to Android devices for stocking, pulling items, and other essential sales floor duties. Target first outfitted its employees with Apple products in 2014, replacing PDAs with iPod Touches. Gizmodo reports: In Fall of 2016, Target stores began testing the Zebra TC51, which runs Android 6.0 Mashmallow and was confirmed to Gizmodo as "the new MyDevices for store team members chainwide" by a company spokesperson over email. On Reddit's r/Target page and the unofficial employee forum The Breakroom, the new devices have been met with enthusiasm -- and plenty of jabs at the old iOS scanners. "The current iOS my devices we have all sorts of issues, connection issues, scanner issues, and tons more," one Breakroom poster complained. On Reddit, a former store manager wrote that "the iPod hardware they used as on the floor scanners for employees died quickly and there was no way of swapping in new batteries. There were many hardware issues that came about with the ipods." While a Target spokesperson confirmed the company will still purchase some products from Apple -- iPads for online order pickups, iPhones for managers -- the sales floor is switching to Android, and the company is staffing up on Android developers to port over all the internal software stores use.
At least w/ Android they have a chance of getting a custom device with some or all of that built in. It's possible to get some pretty specialized Android devices as a mere consumer, for instance a rugged phone with FLIR camera is available, as are rugged phones with integrated 2-way shortwave radios.
An iPod is not a touch is not a PC. Kinda wondering why they didn't give it a power-supply case but I don't know if that's possible because of the barcode scanner. If an app could not have sufficed, I am guessing that inadequate testing went into entire process anyway. Android has been far more open with third party accessories and apps than Apple devices -- I say this as an owner of both but a user of primarily iPod/iPhone tech. I really really hope that Target is bothering to test. Many of my clients never bother to.
I develop develop/enable mobile barcode scanning for a few platforms as a developer, so this is not a subject I'm alien to. There is a very good chance that the app they use is less stable or more power intensive than the ones I develop for. Then again, that would just go back to shitty testing (much to my surprise).
We use Zebra handhelds at Wal-mart, though not that model (ours are MC-40 and TC-70 models). They have a built-in camera-based scanner and removable batteries. We've used the MC-40 for over a year, the TC-70 for a bit less, and they seem reliable. Once in a while the scanner stops working after waking from sleep and you need to reboot to get it to work, but other than that I've had no issues with them. They are locked down to the point I can't say which version of Android they use, but I know it is Android. (Not being in an IT role I don't have Admin rights on the devices.) They do work better than our old devices which ran some version of Windows Mobile on them.