6 ms·

There isn't really much of a tablet market

40 points by yewweitan 16y ago

nazgulnarsil 16y ago
the main argument against tablets (bad software that actively interferes with usability) is going away. The market for tablets that are basically just laptops with a different form factor remains what it was before the ipad: small. the market for a tablet that is easy to hop on the couch with and surf for casual content is huge.
- joeguilmette 16y ago
  80-90% of computer users never leave the browser. The tablet will take over. Everything except power users will be using tablets in 5 years.
  - Xuzz 16y ago
    Assuming you count iTunes and Microsoft Office as part of the browser, which isn't really that much of a stretch. (However, he iTunes Store is a browser (possibly still using their proprietary/strange markup language), and for many (if not most) tasks Google Docs or Microsoft's offering is good enough.)
    - joeguilmette 16y ago
      And you can open .docs on iPad very very easily and edit them with an app that costs 1/10th of MS Office, if not for free with Google Docs.
  - ugh 16y ago
    That seems a bit too optimistic (pessimistic?) to me. I would predict that more than two-thirds of households will have a tablet in five years. I can see tablets replacing kitchen or living room laptops that have become so common in the last years, I can’t see them replacing the office PC, at least not in five years. PCs (~ $800) and tablets (~ $500) are cheap enough to co-exist. I don’t think it was that long ago when you paid $1300 for one desktop PC.
    - joeguilmette 16y ago
      I think a $199 wifi iPad 1 is a few months away. The user experience on such a device will knock the socks off a similarly priced net book. I believe you're right about the desktop in the office though. The fact that XP is still commonplace in offices goes to show the staying power of the form factor in that setting. I mean, the design of most cubicle farms alone is more suited for desktops than tablets.
  - axod 16y ago
    80-90% of websites use keyboard as an input mechanism. I'm not seeing why a tablet is so massively better than a netbook/laptop.
    - guywithabike 16y ago
      What's your source for that statistic? Or did you just make it up?
      - joeguilmette 16y ago
        96% of statistics are made up.
        foljs 16y ago
        Actually, that's 93%.
    - spa942 16y ago
      A lot of people were not seeing that, which is probably why Apple was able to launch a 10" $500 tablet without any competitors in the market.
      - axod 16y ago
        It's still a rich persons toy though, or bought as an additional computer rather than to replace something else. I don't see it going mainstream, or replacing laptops.
    - Xuzz 16y ago
      How much input do you actually do on these websites? Facebook, for a major example, is just a sentence or two for each status update, and a word or two for the chat messages.
      - axod 16y ago
        a laptop isn't the way it is just to house a keyboard. It's that way so you can sit it on your lap with the screen positioned to view it. I'm not gonna hold a tablet in my hands while I try and use it. (I spend the vast majority of my time sat on a sofa with a laptop).
  - samstokes 16y ago
    I assume you (reasonably) count webmail as "not leaving the browser". Typing emails (or Facebook messages or whatever) is much more pleasant on a real keyboard than on a virtual touch-screen keyboard. Seems unlikely people are going to give up typing in droves. What does seem quite plausible is tablet + peripherals - the tablet basically assuming the role of the old mini-tower computer, angled upright on a stand for desktop use, with keyboard and mouse hanging off it. (In fact if you also hung a monitor off it there's no reason you couldn't do that with a regular phone.) I think tablet + dock + keyboard may well become a popular home computer setup in the next few years.
    - joeguilmette 16y ago
      Almost every single Facebook comment and status update made in the past two years has been from an iPhone or iPad. Every comment made in this thread has been from my iPad. Almost all of my email is sent from my iPad, and I write a lot of email. I send vastly more email from iOS than OSX/XP/W7. I use all four operating systems between my personal and work machines, and prefer iOS for almost all tasks. Touchscreen typing is weird at first, but, just like using a physical keyboard you start slow and eventually become proficient and comfortable.
- Xuzz 16y ago
  (Unless you claim that Android is "bad software that actively interferes with usability" (because it doesn't officially support tablets yet, or has custom skins, or isn't integrated, or whatever), which the author seems to be, in a sense, saying. I'm not sure if I agree or not.)
  - joeguilmette 16y ago
    I would say that while popular, Android on the whole is 'bad software' the same way Windows is. Doesn't mean it wont dominate the market.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - ugh 16y ago
      I would argue that Android is currently not in a position to dominate the tablet market in the short term. It’s worse for tablets than Windows was for PCs and it has to (and undoubtedly will) improve in that respect this year. (It was not supposed to run on tablets so you can’t really hold that against Google.) All Android tablets I tried felt like upscaled phones, they use more or less the same phone UI on a bigger screen. That’s just unattractive, why carry around that huge device when using a phone is approximately as comfortable? Tablets have to be more comfortable to use than phones. iOS makes better use of the additional real estate and using it is more fun than using a phone. It’s not just a huge iPod touch.
      - enjo 16y ago
        That's the entire point of Honeycomb. It's too provide native support for tablet interfaces. *edit: native support for native interfaces doesn't make any sense:)
      - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
        > It’s not just a huge iPod touch. Yes, it is. The only difference you're seeing is that developers for iOS apps have accommodated for the additional screen real estate after its release. Developers of Android apps haven't yet because the OS isn't officially ready for tablets until Honeycomb. Once an official Android tablet is released post-Honeycomb can you actually start to make comparisons.
proee 16y ago
The nook from B&N is recently reported as their new best-selling product. So I'd say that the non-iPad tablets are quickly gaining momentum. Would like to see some data backing up the author's claims.
- Bud 16y ago
  The Nook is a reader, not a full-featured tablet. Apples and oranges.
  - rlmw 16y ago
    I don't know which nook he is referring to, but the Nook Color is an Android tablet basically with their e-reader software installed. Its not quite as clear cut as all that.
    - nlawalker 16y ago
      I've never played with another Android device to compare, but I think that the Nook is actually somewhere in-between. From what I can tell, the Nook runs a customized version of Android. The most important customizations are the home screen (the desktop that can only show Nook books purchased from BN), the overall UI, and the fact that you can't install apps on it without rooting it.
kenjackson 16y ago
If you count the Nook Color, I know more people that got Nook Color than iPads for XMas. Nook Colors were crazy sellers from what I can see anecdotally.
estacado 16y ago
The tablet market is too young to be regarded as miniscule. Software-wise, we have only started to think about touch input seriously. There still so much that can be done.
- Bud 16y ago
  This strikes me as the right answer. We're not really sure yet. What if you can do input via brainwave headsets at 100 wpm in 5 years? Not impossible; you can type via brainwaves, right now. Tablets could become nearly magical in less than a decade.
- ggruschow 16y ago
  There were tablets on the market before Macs.
sdghrtrt 16y ago
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zephyrfalcon 16y ago
Well, no, there isn't really much of a tablet market. It's an emerging market; a year ago it didn't even exist until the iPad single-handedly created it. Everybody else is still trying to catch up. Right now your choices are basically, an iPad, or something else that probably isn't nowhere near as good (unless you count Kindles and Nooks which are much more specialized devices). However, in a few years or so, I can totally see casual users ditching their (in their eyes) complicated PCs and netbooks in favor of a tablet of some kind, as long as it does what they want (watch a video, send email, go on Facebook, listen to music, play a game, etc).
- Pewpewarrows 16y ago
  The iPad popularized the Tablet market, it didn't create it. Tablets have existed since 2000.
  - jawee 16y ago
    Although not a tablet in the current sense, I´ve been happily using my Maemo-powered ¨Internet Tablet¨ since before Apple made touchscreens.
    - seabee 16y ago
      The problem is tablet PCs, Nokia Internet Tablets and iPads are all different concepts of a 'tablet', confusingly called the same thing. Compare to Macs and PCs which are both clearly 'personal computers'.
  - zephyrfalcon 16y ago
    Technically yes, but they were all considered failures. I recall that before it became clear what Apple was making (somewhere late 2009), there was a lot of speculation along the lines of, "well it can't possibly be a tablet PC, because nobody has ever had success with that".
  - foljs 16y ago
    Creating a market equals popularizing it. A market of 10 people is not much of a market at all.
jawee 16y ago
I know about five (non-techies) that got Nook Colors and a few people that got Tabs (3 to be exact). It´s probably partially because of the stronghold Verizon holds in my area so AT&T isn´t worth it... there is literally no AT&T service within a 10 mile radius of my house and school. I only know one person who got an iPad; well someone that posted on Facebook. I´m not sure I get the original argument.
- jamesk2 16y ago
  I know many more people who have Kindles or iPads and nobody who own a Nook or a Tab... I live in the SF Bay Area but still, it's an oddly different market where you are... where are you?
  - jawee 16y ago
    I am in a suburb a good ways south of Atlanta, Georgia. Apple seems to have a relatively low market in general in my immediate vicinity except for iPods.
blinkingled 16y ago
Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. With implausible or otherwise manufactured/subjective beliefs sometimes sprinkled in there to make them feel like logical reasons. There isn't anything insightful there - just bigotry. "Neither Google nor Microsoft will ever be able to tailor their software to other manufacturers’ specific (and varied) hardware devices as well as Apple can (and does) with theirs." Really? Marco Arment can predict the future? Do we lose all hope that people will do anything better than Apple? Even in Marco's little part of the world it sounds outrageously short sighted. You can say what you want against everything non-Apple and that would of course be your opinion (as opposed to universally accepted truth) - but this is going too far, even for Marco Arment class of people. He goes preaching about Apple's integrated experience, "superior everything" and ponies - but you know what the whole world is not buying the iPad universally - Samsung sold a million Galaxy Tabs, Androids are already outselling Apple worldwide and reason for that is not that the people buying them are stupid - people just have different needs and tastes. Banging on the "teh superior AAPL drum" with a sad tune of everyone else's suckiness for ever is not going to change that.
- foljs 16y ago
  """Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. """ I know how you feel. And the most annoying thing is how they always come out right: first the renaissance of Apple and the Mac, the iPod, then iTunes, then the iPhone, then the App Store now the iPad. All of these getting great sales, redefining industry, and gathering higher market share, while tens of competitors sink or at best manage to offer knock-offs a couple of years later. Why don't Gruber and company write more like enlightened pundits like Paul Thurrot, Rob Enderle and John Dvorak?
  - blinkingled 16y ago
rlmw 16y ago
Allegedly Samsung have sold 1 million Tabs within 2 months of putting it on sale. [0] This isn't as fast as the ipad, but it does demonstrate that there's a market for non-ipad tablets. One of the things thats quite important in this market is that Android 3 is meant to be rather tablet oriented, and I think that will address his concerns. There certainly are a lot of cheap, poor quality, android tablets on the market at the moment but if you look at the Android phone market it also went this way. Initially people thought it would be loads of cheap asian cloners and it turned out that the best selling android phones were actually the high quality devices. Now I don't want to start some 'Android vs iOS' discussion, buy whatever product suits your taste - thats your choice, but I do think its a little bit hasty to write off tablets from other manufacturers at this moment in time. Perhaps I've misunderstood and he is only talking about the present - but it seems like the author thinks there will never be a serious competitor. [0] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy_Tab_sales_hit_1M_mark http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy...
- mboyle 16y ago
  Have actual consumers purchased a million galaxy tabs or is some portion of that million unit figure inventory that carriers have purchased but not necessarily sold to end users?
  - blinkingled 16y ago
    Actually sold - http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/samsung-sells-one-million-galaxy-tab-units-throws-an-android-pa/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/samsung-sells-one-million...
Pewpewarrows 16y ago
Apple sold a bit more than 4 million iPads the most recent quarter that they released sales reports for. Samsung's Galaxy Tab has sold well over 1 million this past quarter thus far. The Android OS also does not officially support Tablets until the upcoming Honeycomb release. By that comparison there isn't a PC market either. Macs certainly aren't even close to selling at a rate of one-third of the Windows machines right now.

40 points by yewweitan 16y ago

the main argument against tablets (bad software that actively interferes with usability) is going away. The market for tablets that are basically just laptops with a different form factor remains what it was before the ipad: small. the market for a tablet that is easy to hop on the couch with and surf for casual content is huge.

joeguilmette 16y ago
80-90% of computer users never leave the browser. The tablet will take over. Everything except power users will be using tablets in 5 years.
- Xuzz 16y ago
  Assuming you count iTunes and Microsoft Office as part of the browser, which isn't really that much of a stretch. (However, he iTunes Store is a browser (possibly still using their proprietary/strange markup language), and for many (if not most) tasks Google Docs or Microsoft's offering is good enough.)
  - joeguilmette 16y ago
    And you can open .docs on iPad very very easily and edit them with an app that costs 1/10th of MS Office, if not for free with Google Docs.
- ugh 16y ago
  That seems a bit too optimistic (pessimistic?) to me. I would predict that more than two-thirds of households will have a tablet in five years. I can see tablets replacing kitchen or living room laptops that have become so common in the last years, I can’t see them replacing the office PC, at least not in five years. PCs (~ $800) and tablets (~ $500) are cheap enough to co-exist. I don’t think it was that long ago when you paid $1300 for one desktop PC.
  - joeguilmette 16y ago
    I think a $199 wifi iPad 1 is a few months away. The user experience on such a device will knock the socks off a similarly priced net book. I believe you're right about the desktop in the office though. The fact that XP is still commonplace in offices goes to show the staying power of the form factor in that setting. I mean, the design of most cubicle farms alone is more suited for desktops than tablets.
- axod 16y ago
  80-90% of websites use keyboard as an input mechanism. I'm not seeing why a tablet is so massively better than a netbook/laptop.
  - guywithabike 16y ago
    What's your source for that statistic? Or did you just make it up?
    - joeguilmette 16y ago
      96% of statistics are made up.
      - foljs 16y ago
        Actually, that's 93%.
  - spa942 16y ago
    A lot of people were not seeing that, which is probably why Apple was able to launch a 10" $500 tablet without any competitors in the market.
    - axod 16y ago
      It's still a rich persons toy though, or bought as an additional computer rather than to replace something else. I don't see it going mainstream, or replacing laptops.
  - Xuzz 16y ago
    How much input do you actually do on these websites? Facebook, for a major example, is just a sentence or two for each status update, and a word or two for the chat messages.
    - axod 16y ago
      a laptop isn't the way it is just to house a keyboard. It's that way so you can sit it on your lap with the screen positioned to view it. I'm not gonna hold a tablet in my hands while I try and use it. (I spend the vast majority of my time sat on a sofa with a laptop).
- samstokes 16y ago
  I assume you (reasonably) count webmail as "not leaving the browser". Typing emails (or Facebook messages or whatever) is much more pleasant on a real keyboard than on a virtual touch-screen keyboard. Seems unlikely people are going to give up typing in droves. What does seem quite plausible is tablet + peripherals - the tablet basically assuming the role of the old mini-tower computer, angled upright on a stand for desktop use, with keyboard and mouse hanging off it. (In fact if you also hung a monitor off it there's no reason you couldn't do that with a regular phone.) I think tablet + dock + keyboard may well become a popular home computer setup in the next few years.
  - joeguilmette 16y ago
    Almost every single Facebook comment and status update made in the past two years has been from an iPhone or iPad. Every comment made in this thread has been from my iPad. Almost all of my email is sent from my iPad, and I write a lot of email. I send vastly more email from iOS than OSX/XP/W7. I use all four operating systems between my personal and work machines, and prefer iOS for almost all tasks. Touchscreen typing is weird at first, but, just like using a physical keyboard you start slow and eventually become proficient and comfortable.
Xuzz 16y ago
(Unless you claim that Android is "bad software that actively interferes with usability" (because it doesn't officially support tablets yet, or has custom skins, or isn't integrated, or whatever), which the author seems to be, in a sense, saying. I'm not sure if I agree or not.)
- joeguilmette 16y ago
  I would say that while popular, Android on the whole is 'bad software' the same way Windows is. Doesn't mean it wont dominate the market.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ugh 16y ago
    I would argue that Android is currently not in a position to dominate the tablet market in the short term. It’s worse for tablets than Windows was for PCs and it has to (and undoubtedly will) improve in that respect this year. (It was not supposed to run on tablets so you can’t really hold that against Google.) All Android tablets I tried felt like upscaled phones, they use more or less the same phone UI on a bigger screen. That’s just unattractive, why carry around that huge device when using a phone is approximately as comfortable? Tablets have to be more comfortable to use than phones. iOS makes better use of the additional real estate and using it is more fun than using a phone. It’s not just a huge iPod touch.
    - enjo 16y ago
      That's the entire point of Honeycomb. It's too provide native support for tablet interfaces. *edit: native support for native interfaces doesn't make any sense:)
    - Pewpewarrows 16y ago
      > It’s not just a huge iPod touch. Yes, it is. The only difference you're seeing is that developers for iOS apps have accommodated for the additional screen real estate after its release. Developers of Android apps haven't yet because the OS isn't officially ready for tablets until Honeycomb. Once an official Android tablet is released post-Honeycomb can you actually start to make comparisons.

proee 16y ago

The nook from B&N is recently reported as their new best-selling product. So I'd say that the non-iPad tablets are quickly gaining momentum. Would like to see some data backing up the author's claims.

Bud 16y ago
The Nook is a reader, not a full-featured tablet. Apples and oranges.
- rlmw 16y ago
  I don't know which nook he is referring to, but the Nook Color is an Android tablet basically with their e-reader software installed. Its not quite as clear cut as all that.
  - nlawalker 16y ago
    I've never played with another Android device to compare, but I think that the Nook is actually somewhere in-between. From what I can tell, the Nook runs a customized version of Android. The most important customizations are the home screen (the desktop that can only show Nook books purchased from BN), the overall UI, and the fact that you can't install apps on it without rooting it.

kenjackson 16y ago

If you count the Nook Color, I know more people that got Nook Color than iPads for XMas. Nook Colors were crazy sellers from what I can see anecdotally.

estacado 16y ago

The tablet market is too young to be regarded as miniscule. Software-wise, we have only started to think about touch input seriously. There still so much that can be done.

Bud 16y ago
This strikes me as the right answer. We're not really sure yet. What if you can do input via brainwave headsets at 100 wpm in 5 years? Not impossible; you can type via brainwaves, right now. Tablets could become nearly magical in less than a decade.
ggruschow 16y ago
There were tablets on the market before Macs.

sdghrtrt 16y ago

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zephyrfalcon 16y ago

Well, no, there isn't really much of a tablet market. It's an emerging market; a year ago it didn't even exist until the iPad single-handedly created it. Everybody else is still trying to catch up. Right now your choices are basically, an iPad, or something else that probably isn't nowhere near as good (unless you count Kindles and Nooks which are much more specialized devices). However, in a few years or so, I can totally see casual users ditching their (in their eyes) complicated PCs and netbooks in favor of a tablet of some kind, as long as it does what they want (watch a video, send email, go on Facebook, listen to music, play a game, etc).

Pewpewarrows 16y ago
The iPad popularized the Tablet market, it didn't create it. Tablets have existed since 2000.
- jawee 16y ago
  Although not a tablet in the current sense, I´ve been happily using my Maemo-powered ¨Internet Tablet¨ since before Apple made touchscreens.
  - seabee 16y ago
    The problem is tablet PCs, Nokia Internet Tablets and iPads are all different concepts of a 'tablet', confusingly called the same thing. Compare to Macs and PCs which are both clearly 'personal computers'.
- zephyrfalcon 16y ago
  Technically yes, but they were all considered failures. I recall that before it became clear what Apple was making (somewhere late 2009), there was a lot of speculation along the lines of, "well it can't possibly be a tablet PC, because nobody has ever had success with that".
- foljs 16y ago
  Creating a market equals popularizing it. A market of 10 people is not much of a market at all.

jawee 16y ago

I know about five (non-techies) that got Nook Colors and a few people that got Tabs (3 to be exact). It´s probably partially because of the stronghold Verizon holds in my area so AT&T isn´t worth it... there is literally no AT&T service within a 10 mile radius of my house and school. I only know one person who got an iPad; well someone that posted on Facebook. I´m not sure I get the original argument.

jamesk2 16y ago
I know many more people who have Kindles or iPads and nobody who own a Nook or a Tab... I live in the SF Bay Area but still, it's an oddly different market where you are... where are you?
- jawee 16y ago
  I am in a suburb a good ways south of Atlanta, Georgia. Apple seems to have a relatively low market in general in my immediate vicinity except for iPods.

blinkingled 16y ago

Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. With implausible or otherwise manufactured/subjective beliefs sometimes sprinkled in there to make them feel like logical reasons. There isn't anything insightful there - just bigotry. "Neither Google nor Microsoft will ever be able to tailor their software to other manufacturers’ specific (and varied) hardware devices as well as Apple can (and does) with theirs." Really? Marco Arment can predict the future? Do we lose all hope that people will do anything better than Apple? Even in Marco's little part of the world it sounds outrageously short sighted. You can say what you want against everything non-Apple and that would of course be your opinion (as opposed to universally accepted truth) - but this is going too far, even for Marco Arment class of people. He goes preaching about Apple's integrated experience, "superior everything" and ponies - but you know what the whole world is not buying the iPad universally - Samsung sold a million Galaxy Tabs, Androids are already outselling Apple worldwide and reason for that is not that the people buying them are stupid - people just have different needs and tastes. Banging on the "teh superior AAPL drum" with a sad tune of everyone else's suckiness for ever is not going to change that.

foljs 16y ago
"""Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. """ I know how you feel. And the most annoying thing is how they always come out right: first the renaissance of Apple and the Mac, the iPod, then iTunes, then the iPhone, then the App Store now the iPad. All of these getting great sales, redefining industry, and gathering higher market share, while tens of competitors sink or at best manage to offer knock-offs a couple of years later. Why don't Gruber and company write more like enlightened pundits like Paul Thurrot, Rob Enderle and John Dvorak?
- blinkingled 16y ago

rlmw 16y ago

Allegedly Samsung have sold 1 million Tabs within 2 months of putting it on sale. [0] This isn't as fast as the ipad, but it does demonstrate that there's a market for non-ipad tablets. One of the things thats quite important in this market is that Android 3 is meant to be rather tablet oriented, and I think that will address his concerns. There certainly are a lot of cheap, poor quality, android tablets on the market at the moment but if you look at the Android phone market it also went this way. Initially people thought it would be loads of cheap asian cloners and it turned out that the best selling android phones were actually the high quality devices. Now I don't want to start some 'Android vs iOS' discussion, buy whatever product suits your taste - thats your choice, but I do think its a little bit hasty to write off tablets from other manufacturers at this moment in time. Perhaps I've misunderstood and he is only talking about the present - but it seems like the author thinks there will never be a serious competitor. [0] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy_Tab_sales_hit_1M_mark http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy...

mboyle 16y ago
Have actual consumers purchased a million galaxy tabs or is some portion of that million unit figure inventory that carriers have purchased but not necessarily sold to end users?
- blinkingled 16y ago
  Actually sold - http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/samsung-sells-one-million-galaxy-tab-units-throws-an-android-pa/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/samsung-sells-one-million...

Pewpewarrows 16y ago

Apple sold a bit more than 4 million iPads the most recent quarter that they released sales reports for. Samsung's Galaxy Tab has sold well over 1 million this past quarter thus far. The Android OS also does not officially support Tablets until the upcoming Honeycomb release. By that comparison there isn't a PC market either. Macs certainly aren't even close to selling at a rate of one-third of the Windows machines right now.