6 ms·

The Android tablet problem - Marco Arment

22 points by movingahead 15y ago

movingahead 15y ago
Marco's post makes it clear why traditional review sites don't work for the normal consumer. On a different level, this post also raises a big question - how can someone compete with a well established app platform like Apple's ? Android managed to do it on phones because it was the lone competitor to Apple in the touch phone segment, but I feel the same success will be tough to repeat with tablets.
- hboon 15y ago
  Build, license or buy their way into an ecosystem. Apple's current formidable strength is its ecosystem of content (app+media) and peripheral of hardware devices (iPhone + iPod touch + iPad + Mac). Let's make a bold assumption that a Mac counterpart isn't needed. Let's make it even simpler, we'll just need an iPhone+iPad combination of hardware. Start with a partnership, say HTC with Amazon. So you can have decent hardware for a phone and tablet from HTC, along with content (app+media) from Amazon. Maybe it's hard to forge such a partnership, maybe there's a dozen of reasons why this isn't possible, maybe HTC like it's current way of business, maybe Amazon is building it's own hardware, but I know I'd want to do this to win. When you can't win by yourself, partner with someone else so you can win together.
  - evinfinite 15y ago
    The rumors all point to major ecosystem builders cutting the middleman and in-housing hardware dev, though.
  - movingahead 15y ago
    Agree, partnerships can help them compete. But, the problem is that whoever has a good ecosystem is trying to go for the bigger pie. Amazon is building its own Android ecosystem - has an app store and will most probably come up with a tablet. HTC has its own movie and music services on its Sense devices. Even if a partnership happens, I am not sure it will be enough of an attraction for consumers to leave the iOS platform.
kenjackson 15y ago
What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the door to make great apps for it? Simple. Price. The new Vizio 3.1 tablet is $350. If they can hit $299 by the holidays, these may well fly. But the app ecosystem you say? Not important. What?! How can that be? Most users won't care about apps they don't know about, and most ppl don't know about iPad apps. If I can demo the following to you: 1) HD video playback w/ some key apps like Netflix and Hulu 2) Kindle/Nook eReader 3) Music player 4) Web browser 5) Office suite 6) Some games 7) Nice scrolling and responsive UI 8) GMail/Maps 9) The price is $150 cheaper than the iPad. I'm done. You're sold. The long tail I just don't think matters as much as ppl in the industry think it does. It's the exact same reason why OS X is viable now for most ppl despite the fact that the Windows app ecosystem is still much larger. The web neutralized that difference though. The web isn't quite as important on mobile devices (surprisingly), but the ecosystem gap isn't as important as it was in 1990 on the desktop. The big problem with Honeycomb (Android Tablet) is that Google treats it like they do everything -- they shipped a beta quality product. They did that with Android for phones, but its pretty baked now. They did it with Google TV and with Chrome Books. But with Honeycomb and Google TV (especially) they didn't update them the way they do the Chrome browser. The problem with Honeycomb up to this point is that it was crap. It sounds like this is beginning to change.
- technoslut 15y ago
  I don't think it's as simple as price. If that is the case then why did the iPod become such a dominant device back in the early 2000s when it cost $400-500? My guess is that there is a limit to where the customer is willing to pay for a quality product. Marco seems to go a little overboard but it is legitimate to ask why reviewers seem to pull their punches with any iPad competitors. Whether it's to create a storyline of Apple vs whomever or there is a distaste for Apple products, these reviews aren't helping anyone make a purchasing decision.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    why did the iPod become such a dominant device back in the early 2000s when it cost $400-500? I don't know why you say the iPod is a "dominant" device. Sure it is successful, but it created a new market - tablets before it weren't really counting. It's easy to be "dominant" in a market that you created, but I'm also pretty sure that if you compare the number of iPad owners to the number of PC-owners, well, those numbers won't look so great. What I'm trying to say here is that a LOT of people that would be interested in something like the iPad haven't bought one yet, and those people are much more in number than the current iPad users. The pie is currently very small. It can be much bigger and everyone can have a slice ;)
WoundedMarlin 15y ago
I think the biggest problem that Android (Honeycomb) is having is that Google totally rebuilt the OS for the tablet. Where as apple did not make many changes to there iOS and the developers had to make very few changes to their apps code to make it run on the iPad. Android (Honeycomb) will be fine it is just taking developers longer to fix the code to run with all the new features that Honeycomb has to offer.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Google totally rebuilt the OS for the tablet No they didn't. And about compatibility, Android 3.x does have new features (as one would expect from a new version, you know), but some of those features got backported in what they call the Android Compatibility package.
- cageface 15y ago
  The really good iPad apps have interfaces that were designed for the iPad. Rethinking an interface for a completely different form factor is a lot more work that twiddling with enough APIs to get your code running. Just ask the people complaining now about Android phone apps stretched to fit a tablet screen.
unattended 15y ago
The review seems a bit biased. Sure, Apple may have a head start in many aspects but this is just generalizing and reading between the lines of a different review with assumptions and speculation peppered throughout. The Android platform may not be the perfect developer ecosystem when compared to itunes and iOS apps, but there's plenty of gems and the developers behind them will eventually crawl onto larger screens when they figure it out and have the time. There's plenty of applications already in the marketplace for legitimately getting media onto the device which Marco either overlooked or dismissed. The Android marketplace even has a movie rental section which isn't hard to miss either. The good reason for picking an Android tablet over an iPad? Easy, no stupid lock-ins.
darklajid 15y ago
For me (I don't claim to represent a viable market share though) it's simple enough: I have no use for a tablet so far. I played around with an iPad, and frankly I couldn't care less. Yes, it's nice and "shiny", my inner gadget collector wants to keep it. But I know that I wouldn't use it. I want _my_ selection of software available, I want decent tinkering ability (can I easily create software for this? Can I change things to suit me, whatever the industry defines as 'best' right now?) and - power. A smartphone with a larger screen (which is more or less the impression these things leave on me) is nothing I long for. I'll wait, look at each new candidate - and see if anyone of them might appeal here. The iPad, while beautiful, probably never will. Touchpad maybe? But I doubt that as well.
dannyr 15y ago
I heard a lot of these arguments before. 3-4 years ago when the early Android phones came out and being compared to the IPhone. From the post: ======== Developers will rush to Android tablets once a lot of people are buying Android tablets. But hardly anyone will buy them if there’s too little compelling software available. So there must be a very good reason why someone would choose any given Android tablet over an iPad, and that reason can’t be the available apps. This, not how closely a manufacturer can mimic the iPad’s hardware, is what reviewers should be asking about each new tablet: Why would a significant number of buyers choose this instead of an iPad? Or, more generally: What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the door to make great apps for it? ======== Replace "Android tablet" with "Android phone" and "IPad" with "IPhone" and it's almost exactly like what Android naysayers were saying years ago.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  While I disagree with Marco, I think you can't make this comparison. Android (for phones) came up in a different world. It competed against the iPhone when the iPhone was on one US carrier and Android went to the other three. Android on phones had a captive market. That doesn't exist for tablets. On tablets Android must win marketshare by taking sales from the iPad ... not by saying, "if you're on Verizon, there is no iPhone".
  - dannyr 15y ago
    I agree that there are no carriers involved which makes it different. However, there are still elements similar to the smartphone that exist. One is form factor. There will be Android tablets with different sizes, with dual screen, with slide-out keyboard. This would widen its appeal which would translate to more sales. Another is price. Like with the phones, there will be several manufacturers building Android tablets. With the competition, prices will much more attractive compared to the IPad. Also, this would be fully integrated with Google services. This is the main reason why I picked an Android phone in the first place because I use Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. The IPad cannot give the same integrated experience. On a sidenote, I actually wonder how brand affiliation would impact tablet sales. I have an Android phone which is why I picked an Android tablet. If this is true for most people, Android tablets will sell really well since Android's market share is now bigger than the IPhone's.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
cough Yup, software is why the iPhone is enjoying so much success and Android is struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market. The Xoom has been out for a couple of months, the 10.1 hasn't even been released yet. Is it possible that we could wait a bit longer and reflect back on Android v. iOS Tablet-edition (or at the very least the 10.1) rather than espouse these completely inferred blog posts that only lead to fanboyism and (literally, seriously) useless conversations.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Android is struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market? Since when? Last I checked it grew from 4% to 30% market share in 12 months.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    sigh I know sarcasm is discouraged here. I just have such a hard time resisting it.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
kefs 15y ago
The only real Android tablet problem is that the Honeycomb emulator performance blows goats and you need to have a physical device to do any sort of meaningful development. Google is working on it though, just not fast enough for us devs. :( http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-acknowledges-honeycomb-emulator-performance-problems-hard-at-work-on-fixes/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-acknowl...
Tichy 15y ago
If device thickness wouldn't matter, people would still be buying iPad 1s. A lot of devlopers already have Android apps that only need to be ported to Honeycomb. I am not going to install 400000 apps on my tablet. I don't like Apple's lock in and politics.
- estel 15y ago
  You can only infer that if the iPad 2 were released simultaneously with the iPad 1 and with otherwise identical specs. The iPad2 is the /next/ product Apple released: of course it will sell more. Apple are exceptionally good at getting people to buy into their annual refresh.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    But the iPad 1 is cheaper.
    - estel 15y ago
      And broadly discontinued.
tomjen3 15y ago
>“The Tab is a reasonable choice for people who watch a lot of video, as long as it’s all pirated, because there’s almost no legal content available.” Ha, the only thing that proves is that Marco lives in a nationalistic bubble. Outside the US, there is no video content on the iTunes store. Nothing, not even a public domain propaganda movie or some old public domain stuff. Yet the iPad is popular here, as well.
- rlmw 15y ago
  He's also ignoring the existence of youtube, which is an incredibly popular platform for watching video on. In the UK we have several platforms for watching on demand TV, which are available in any web browser. The author clearly hasn't done the most basic research.
nextparadigms 15y ago
I think he underestimates how many Android early adopters are there. I'm sure there are at least a few million out there who would buy an Android tablet this year if given the chance for a good looking, high performance an well priced one. The Xoom was too expensive. Asus Transformer has been hard to get so far. And Galaxy Tab may be arriving a little too late because a lot of people are already expecting Tegra 3 tablets, but I'm sure it will sell quite well, too. However, I don't think Android tablets will make a big impact until the second wave starts, late this year - all the Tegra 3 tablets arriving, and Amazon is launching 2 tablets as well, and they'll push those heavily. And ultimately, the price will help the most, probably. Once the big name manufacturers start making "mid-end" tablets under $300, I think marketshare for Android tablets will quickly rise.
AndrewDucker 15y ago
I will not be buying an iPad. Or any other tablet that ties me to a single store (especially one vetted for "decency"). That leaves me, at the moment, with Android if I want a tablet.

22 points by movingahead 15y ago

Marco's post makes it clear why traditional review sites don't work for the normal consumer. On a different level, this post also raises a big question - how can someone compete with a well established app platform like Apple's ? Android managed to do it on phones because it was the lone competitor to Apple in the touch phone segment, but I feel the same success will be tough to repeat with tablets.

hboon 15y ago
Build, license or buy their way into an ecosystem. Apple's current formidable strength is its ecosystem of content (app+media) and peripheral of hardware devices (iPhone + iPod touch + iPad + Mac). Let's make a bold assumption that a Mac counterpart isn't needed. Let's make it even simpler, we'll just need an iPhone+iPad combination of hardware. Start with a partnership, say HTC with Amazon. So you can have decent hardware for a phone and tablet from HTC, along with content (app+media) from Amazon. Maybe it's hard to forge such a partnership, maybe there's a dozen of reasons why this isn't possible, maybe HTC like it's current way of business, maybe Amazon is building it's own hardware, but I know I'd want to do this to win. When you can't win by yourself, partner with someone else so you can win together.
- evinfinite 15y ago
  The rumors all point to major ecosystem builders cutting the middleman and in-housing hardware dev, though.
- movingahead 15y ago
  Agree, partnerships can help them compete. But, the problem is that whoever has a good ecosystem is trying to go for the bigger pie. Amazon is building its own Android ecosystem - has an app store and will most probably come up with a tablet. HTC has its own movie and music services on its Sense devices. Even if a partnership happens, I am not sure it will be enough of an attraction for consumers to leave the iOS platform.

kenjackson 15y ago

What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the door to make great apps for it? Simple. Price. The new Vizio 3.1 tablet is $350. If they can hit $299 by the holidays, these may well fly. But the app ecosystem you say? Not important. What?! How can that be? Most users won't care about apps they don't know about, and most ppl don't know about iPad apps. If I can demo the following to you: 1) HD video playback w/ some key apps like Netflix and Hulu 2) Kindle/Nook eReader 3) Music player 4) Web browser 5) Office suite 6) Some games 7) Nice scrolling and responsive UI 8) GMail/Maps 9) The price is $150 cheaper than the iPad. I'm done. You're sold. The long tail I just don't think matters as much as ppl in the industry think it does. It's the exact same reason why OS X is viable now for most ppl despite the fact that the Windows app ecosystem is still much larger. The web neutralized that difference though. The web isn't quite as important on mobile devices (surprisingly), but the ecosystem gap isn't as important as it was in 1990 on the desktop. The big problem with Honeycomb (Android Tablet) is that Google treats it like they do everything -- they shipped a beta quality product. They did that with Android for phones, but its pretty baked now. They did it with Google TV and with Chrome Books. But with Honeycomb and Google TV (especially) they didn't update them the way they do the Chrome browser. The problem with Honeycomb up to this point is that it was crap. It sounds like this is beginning to change.

technoslut 15y ago
I don't think it's as simple as price. If that is the case then why did the iPod become such a dominant device back in the early 2000s when it cost $400-500? My guess is that there is a limit to where the customer is willing to pay for a quality product. Marco seems to go a little overboard but it is legitimate to ask why reviewers seem to pull their punches with any iPad competitors. Whether it's to create a storyline of Apple vs whomever or there is a distaste for Apple products, these reviews aren't helping anyone make a purchasing decision.
- bad_user 15y ago
  why did the iPod become such a dominant device back in the early 2000s when it cost $400-500? I don't know why you say the iPod is a "dominant" device. Sure it is successful, but it created a new market - tablets before it weren't really counting. It's easy to be "dominant" in a market that you created, but I'm also pretty sure that if you compare the number of iPad owners to the number of PC-owners, well, those numbers won't look so great. What I'm trying to say here is that a LOT of people that would be interested in something like the iPad haven't bought one yet, and those people are much more in number than the current iPad users. The pie is currently very small. It can be much bigger and everyone can have a slice ;)

WoundedMarlin 15y ago

I think the biggest problem that Android (Honeycomb) is having is that Google totally rebuilt the OS for the tablet. Where as apple did not make many changes to there iOS and the developers had to make very few changes to their apps code to make it run on the iPad. Android (Honeycomb) will be fine it is just taking developers longer to fix the code to run with all the new features that Honeycomb has to offer.

bad_user 15y ago
Google totally rebuilt the OS for the tablet No they didn't. And about compatibility, Android 3.x does have new features (as one would expect from a new version, you know), but some of those features got backported in what they call the Android Compatibility package.
cageface 15y ago
The really good iPad apps have interfaces that were designed for the iPad. Rethinking an interface for a completely different form factor is a lot more work that twiddling with enough APIs to get your code running. Just ask the people complaining now about Android phone apps stretched to fit a tablet screen.

unattended 15y ago

The review seems a bit biased. Sure, Apple may have a head start in many aspects but this is just generalizing and reading between the lines of a different review with assumptions and speculation peppered throughout. The Android platform may not be the perfect developer ecosystem when compared to itunes and iOS apps, but there's plenty of gems and the developers behind them will eventually crawl onto larger screens when they figure it out and have the time. There's plenty of applications already in the marketplace for legitimately getting media onto the device which Marco either overlooked or dismissed. The Android marketplace even has a movie rental section which isn't hard to miss either. The good reason for picking an Android tablet over an iPad? Easy, no stupid lock-ins.

darklajid 15y ago

For me (I don't claim to represent a viable market share though) it's simple enough: I have no use for a tablet so far. I played around with an iPad, and frankly I couldn't care less. Yes, it's nice and "shiny", my inner gadget collector wants to keep it. But I know that I wouldn't use it. I want _my_ selection of software available, I want decent tinkering ability (can I easily create software for this? Can I change things to suit me, whatever the industry defines as 'best' right now?) and - power. A smartphone with a larger screen (which is more or less the impression these things leave on me) is nothing I long for. I'll wait, look at each new candidate - and see if anyone of them might appeal here. The iPad, while beautiful, probably never will. Touchpad maybe? But I doubt that as well.

dannyr 15y ago

I heard a lot of these arguments before. 3-4 years ago when the early Android phones came out and being compared to the IPhone. From the post: ======== Developers will rush to Android tablets once a lot of people are buying Android tablets. But hardly anyone will buy them if there’s too little compelling software available. So there must be a very good reason why someone would choose any given Android tablet over an iPad, and that reason can’t be the available apps. This, not how closely a manufacturer can mimic the iPad’s hardware, is what reviewers should be asking about each new tablet: Why would a significant number of buyers choose this instead of an iPad? Or, more generally: What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the door to make great apps for it? ======== Replace "Android tablet" with "Android phone" and "IPad" with "IPhone" and it's almost exactly like what Android naysayers were saying years ago.

kenjackson 15y ago
While I disagree with Marco, I think you can't make this comparison. Android (for phones) came up in a different world. It competed against the iPhone when the iPhone was on one US carrier and Android went to the other three. Android on phones had a captive market. That doesn't exist for tablets. On tablets Android must win marketshare by taking sales from the iPad ... not by saying, "if you're on Verizon, there is no iPhone".
- dannyr 15y ago
  I agree that there are no carriers involved which makes it different. However, there are still elements similar to the smartphone that exist. One is form factor. There will be Android tablets with different sizes, with dual screen, with slide-out keyboard. This would widen its appeal which would translate to more sales. Another is price. Like with the phones, there will be several manufacturers building Android tablets. With the competition, prices will much more attractive compared to the IPad. Also, this would be fully integrated with Google services. This is the main reason why I picked an Android phone in the first place because I use Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. The IPad cannot give the same integrated experience. On a sidenote, I actually wonder how brand affiliation would impact tablet sales. I have an Android phone which is why I picked an Android tablet. If this is true for most people, Android tablets will sell really well since Android's market share is now bigger than the IPhone's.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

cough Yup, software is why the iPhone is enjoying so much success and Android is struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market. The Xoom has been out for a couple of months, the 10.1 hasn't even been released yet. Is it possible that we could wait a bit longer and reflect back on Android v. iOS Tablet-edition (or at the very least the 10.1) rather than espouse these completely inferred blog posts that only lead to fanboyism and (literally, seriously) useless conversations.

nextparadigms 15y ago
Android is struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market? Since when? Last I checked it grew from 4% to 30% market share in 12 months.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  sigh I know sarcasm is discouraged here. I just have such a hard time resisting it.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

kefs 15y ago

The only real Android tablet problem is that the Honeycomb emulator performance blows goats and you need to have a physical device to do any sort of meaningful development. Google is working on it though, just not fast enough for us devs. :( http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-acknowledges-honeycomb-emulator-performance-problems-hard-at-work-on-fixes/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-acknowl...

Tichy 15y ago

If device thickness wouldn't matter, people would still be buying iPad 1s. A lot of devlopers already have Android apps that only need to be ported to Honeycomb. I am not going to install 400000 apps on my tablet. I don't like Apple's lock in and politics.

estel 15y ago
You can only infer that if the iPad 2 were released simultaneously with the iPad 1 and with otherwise identical specs. The iPad2 is the /next/ product Apple released: of course it will sell more. Apple are exceptionally good at getting people to buy into their annual refresh.
- Tichy 15y ago
  But the iPad 1 is cheaper.
  - estel 15y ago
    And broadly discontinued.

tomjen3 15y ago

>“The Tab is a reasonable choice for people who watch a lot of video, as long as it’s all pirated, because there’s almost no legal content available.” Ha, the only thing that proves is that Marco lives in a nationalistic bubble. Outside the US, there is no video content on the iTunes store. Nothing, not even a public domain propaganda movie or some old public domain stuff. Yet the iPad is popular here, as well.

rlmw 15y ago
He's also ignoring the existence of youtube, which is an incredibly popular platform for watching video on. In the UK we have several platforms for watching on demand TV, which are available in any web browser. The author clearly hasn't done the most basic research.

nextparadigms 15y ago

I think he underestimates how many Android early adopters are there. I'm sure there are at least a few million out there who would buy an Android tablet this year if given the chance for a good looking, high performance an well priced one. The Xoom was too expensive. Asus Transformer has been hard to get so far. And Galaxy Tab may be arriving a little too late because a lot of people are already expecting Tegra 3 tablets, but I'm sure it will sell quite well, too. However, I don't think Android tablets will make a big impact until the second wave starts, late this year - all the Tegra 3 tablets arriving, and Amazon is launching 2 tablets as well, and they'll push those heavily. And ultimately, the price will help the most, probably. Once the big name manufacturers start making "mid-end" tablets under $300, I think marketshare for Android tablets will quickly rise.

AndrewDucker 15y ago

I will not be buying an iPad. Or any other tablet that ties me to a single store (especially one vetted for "decency"). That leaves me, at the moment, with Android if I want a tablet.