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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.
No business should use a single source product/solution when there is an equal alternative with multiple vendors.
In that case, if Target even runs into trouble with Samsung, they can easily switch to LG or whatever. It would be even better if they were not dependent on Google for the OS, but having multiple hardware vendors is a good start.
All the touch iPods are basically iPhones without the modem.
"The current iOS my devices we have all sorts of issues"
Apparently the Android grammar checker ain't so hot.
It's for specific cases like these that I wanted to see Linux distros getting a true, solid working mobile commercial version with continuous support and enterprise/business adoption...
And yes, I know Android is based on a Linux kernel, but I'm talking more like Ubuntu Mobile expanding and going forward, or something else.
Because honestly, I'm not sure how much replacing iOS devices with Android devices in cases like these will help. Fanboyism aside, Android devices have as many if not more potential problems in comparison to Apple stuff, particularly in business and enterprise scenarios.
Connection issues, scanner issues? Android devices also have those. Replaceable batteries? Perhaps the company they closed a deal with (Zebra) still has devices with replaceable batteries, but this is clearly going away on Android devices in general... I think the last flagship phone that had it was the LG V20, and the update to it (V30 released recently) is sealed with no easy replacement for battery. Not even cheaper phones or phones with alternative markets (active lines, rugged lines, etc) are coming with the option anymore.
They'll eventually have to go with external battery cases and whatnot.
How would a Linux mobile help? Well, I guess it really depends how the whole implementation would work really... and it wouldn't be easy. But it'd really be best not to get tied to Google or Apple for cases like those, to have an OS that could be installed in multiple mobile configurations, to have access to code to configure it down to devices' specific functions, etc etc.
When you are on iPods, iPads, iPhones, or Android devices you are basically running a whole bunch of useless crap on top of the software you really need for sales floors and warehouse management. Not to talk about privacy and security worries, the world could really use right now an alternative to big corporation devices for tasks like these.
And I'm no Linux fanatic myself... Android phone user and Windows 10 desktop here. It's just that I think the lack of competition in this area is bringing a whole lot of problems recently.
> So they took a sleek consumer device and strapped an aftermarket 3rd party barcode scanner onto it and wondered why the hardware behaved like a big kludge?
Suuure. A PC with a peripheral attached is a "big kludge".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
When I'm looking for something at Target, I go to their web site, and I can find the isle location where I can find it. Once I showed what I had to a Target employee helping me. They were amazed at the detail I was able to access. Along with a few other larger retailers, they've built a good site.
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).
"...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"
And how many employees were reprimanded for not plugging them in to recharge? A similar situation happened at a store close to me. A friend said the morning/afternoon shifts would screw around and not recharge devices. Leaving the night crew having to wait their turn for the only remaining device working. Why was this happening?....
1) No one plugged it in to recharge.
2) The recharge cord wasn't plugged in because the employee removed it so they could recharge their own phone. (Hey, Pokemon Go takes up a lot of juice during an eight hour shift. And no, I'm not kidding. This was actually being done by the same employees who were also [see #1 & #3].
3) When they were fully charged the powerstrip would be turned off. And then forgotten to be turned on again. In order to save energy. "Also turn the lights off when you leave the room." Even though people are in and out all day. And it take more power to turn it on/off 30x then it would use if you just left it on.
Also you notice managers won't lose their iPhones.You know, the ones they probably use for Pokemon Go. ;)
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
iPod in a scanner sled actually works really well, right up to the point the battery swells or wears out. Then you yank the iPod out of the sled, and waste time sending someone to the Apple store to swap out the entire device since Apple's battery replacement program is really an $80 device replacement program. Then the devices come back to IT for provisioning and reassembly, and finally back on the warehouse floor.
This is what we're faced with today in our business as well. The iPod in a sled has worked incredibly well from a software and manageability standpoint, it's the batteries that are kicking our butts. We typically wait until a half dozen or so units are dead before we waste a half day sending someone to sit around the Apple store. The cost doesn't make me happy, it's not huge dollars but those are unnecessarily spent dollars. As such, I'm about to kick off development of our new order picking system, and I am going with generic Android devices with user replaceable batteries for this very reason.
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