8 ms·
It is amazing to me that of everyone who has made tablets, only Apple seems to be successful at it. Maybe it is just like someone said recently: there is no tab
by RexRollman 15y ago
It is amazing to me that of everyone who has made tablets, only Apple seems to be successful at it. Maybe it is just like someone said recently: there is no tablet market; just an iPad market.
- scorpioxy 15y agoI don't think that's right. The Motorola Xoom seems to have done ok, and so did the Samsung tablet. HP never exerted any effort into its tablet. It released a faulty device just to catch up with the rest of the vendors releasing devices. I believe that the next wave of Android tablets will be awesome, so the next generation from Motorola and Samsung. HP doesn't seem interested.
- olivercameron 15y agoYou mean the same Motorola Xoom that may have sold as few as 25,000[1] units? 1. http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/229402272 http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/22...
- scorpioxy 15y agoThat article also says "number of Xooms sold between 25,000 and 120,000". And don't forget that the price was very expensive at launch. My point was that saying the one true tablet is the iPad is false but HP is the wrong player to consider.
- olivercameron 15y agoEven if it's 250,000 sold, that's still not even a dent in iPad sales.
- xp84 15y agoAlso, two of those Xooms are gathering dust here at work. We got them intending to write Android versions of the iOS apps we were making... The iPads were fought over, but one of the Xooms ended up in a file cabinet for a few months, and the other has barely been touched either. I feel sorry for those things. The only thing a Xoom is really good for is disappointing your kids on Christmas morning.
- anigbrowl 15y agoAsus claims to be selling 400,000 Eee tablets a month. I own one, and when I went to pick up a cover sleeve at Central Computers* lately they said the things are flying off the shelves. * best walk-in store in SF, btw
- bengl3rt 15y agoI love Central Computer! It has the selection of Fry's, but the employees actually speak english and the merchandise is well lit and organized... and for that you do pay quite a premium over Fry's, but it's worth it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- recoiledsnake 15y ago>Maybe it is just like someone said recently: there is no tablet market; just an iPad market We will have more data points on that 'observation' when Windows 8 launches(April, say the rumors).
- brk 15y agoWe will have more data points on that 'observation' when Windows 8 launches Sorry, but I just find this statement hard to agree with. Microsoft is forever shipping some "game changer" "pretty soon now", but they haven't managed to change any games in a very long time now. If Microsoft, or anyone else, has some revolutionary thing, it will be interesting to see it when it happens. But I am certainly not anticipating any such event in the next year.
- AshMokhberi 15y agoin my view MS did have a game changer http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digital-journal-exclusive-pictures-and-de/?m=false http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digita... It still makes the iPad look half baked. but as is the way with MS they killed it and settled for mediocre. I'm beggining to wonder if MS are actually scared of being innovative.
- potatolicious 15y ago> "I'm beggining to wonder if MS are actually scared of being innovative." This might actually be a pretty good summary of MSFT's corporate culture. The impression I always get from the inside is that it's a company dominated by middle managers. They've got so many PMs in so many layers that you'd wonder if it's just PMs all the way down. The combination of mature, gigantic company, lack of strong leadership, and extremely generous benefits has combined to create a population of people who are there for the stability and extremely afraid of rocking the boat or killing the golden goose.
- unavoidable 15y ago
- Pewpewarrows 15y agoActually, Android Tablets have already taken 20% of the market: http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3753-Android+Takes+20%25+Media+Tablet+Market+Share+from+iPad+in+Last+12+Months http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3753-Android+Takes+20%25+Me... Android-based Phones were slower to get that much market-share, and we all know how that turned out. It's really just a matter of time.
- A-K 15y ago"It's really just a matter of time." Is it though? Shipments don't equal sales. http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance
- Pewpewarrows 15y agoSure, you can put blinders on and ignore the last 3 years of identical arguments being tossed around, and the results of those 3 years of sales.
- georgemcbay 15y agoYes, it is really just a matter of time... and of Android tablet manufacturers finding the sweet spot between features and pricing (which ASUS has with the Transformer but other manufacturers have been iffy with thus far)... but that too is just another thing time is already sorting out.
- notatoad 15y agoi just read a good comment on reddit explaining why that number is wrong: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jn2dy/.../c2dgjur http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jn2dy/.../c2dgju...
- waitwhat 15y agoThe redditor assumes that every android tablet is either running honeycomb or running an x-large profile. This is trivially false.
- brudgers 15y agoFujitsu has been successfully making tablets for the better part of two decades. http://solutions.us.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_07.php http://solutions.us.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-...
- xp84 15y agoYeah yeah, but "Tablet PC" is not the same device as we mean today when we say tablet. And also, I guess by "successfully making tablets" you mean "being the only mfg who bothers with the incredibly tiny niche of Tablet PC buyers consisting of warehouse operations, hospitals, and about 20 really nerdy college students." And even then, much of that niche may in the future go to "real tablets" that run mobile OSs instead of Windows XP/7. For one thing, "real tablets" in the modern sense cost about a third of those huge pen-based Windows things.
- younata 15y agoI have a tablet pc. After getting rid of windows, I came to love it. That said, I would not recommend it to people. The iPad actually can, and does, do the job of a tablet pc far better than any tablet pc I've used.
- pyre 15y agoThe same was said when the iPhone launched. edit: Care to explain the down votes? It's too early to make such proclamations. It took a while for the cellphone market to catch up with Apple, why should we expect the tablet market to be any different?
- ralfd 15y agoTrue, but the tablet market is in one important aspect different from the phone market, in that the distribution channels are vastly different. Many who buy a new phone just take what the carriers are shoving in their sales channel. In the best case scenario the iPad could play out more like the iPod: year after year there were prominent iPod-killers like the Zune and cheap knockoffs and year after year Apple dominated the market.
- Game_Ender 15y agoiPhone didn't immediately command a large percentage of the market, the iPad does. This is much closer to the iPod situation where many companies tried to match it but failed.
- demoo 15y agoThe iPad and iPod were indeed more of a catch-up game for competitors. The iPhone on the other hand already had some established competition.
- jsz0 15y agoFor one thing it was Apple's exclusivity with AT&T that opened the door for Verizon to push Android which played a vital role in its success. Things are a bit different with the iPad being that it's offered in both CDMA and GSM and the wifi-only model is, by far, the most popular. It's also important to note there's really only one successful competitor to the iPhone -- Android. WebOS is dead, RIM is on the ropes, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, etc didn't catch up as much as they let Google catch-up and they rode their success. (my point being we can't under estimate the difficulty in trying to compete toe-to-toe with iOS as only one company has done it successfully to date)
- Legion 15y agoI don't think that's the case, but there definitely isn't a market for tablets that fail to compete on features or price. The brilliance of what Apple has done with their mobile products is hard to overstate. They put all this effort into designing mobile chips and a mobile OS for the iPhone and iPod Touch. They took the fruits of those efforts and stuck them into a tablet format, and bam, you've got an iPad. They took them and stuck them into a set-top box, and bam, you've got the Apple TV 2G. They get to spread the development costs of their silicon and OS over these four product lines. Talk about efficient reuse of your development investment. I own three separate devices powered by an A4 CPU and iOS operating system.
- wmf 15y agoYet somehow the same strategy is not working that well for Android tablets and STBs.
- Legion 15y agoYou mean the one platform besides iOS that actually does have a foothold in the market? Android is now 20% of the tablet market, while the BB Playbook is nowhere and the HP TouchPad can't even stay alive for two months.
- xp84 15y agoMain reason being they can't even compete on price without those fat carrier subsidies that it took to get Android for phones off the ground. They're pretty much at price parity with the market leader with a fraction of the useful apps, and surprised why they're not selling that well. Anyone who thinks Android would be the leading smartphone OS if their devices were sold at price parity with iPhones is deluding themselves. Similarly, if Apple wanted to overtake Windows PC markethsare with Macs (they don't) they would be foolish not to compete on price. When you are asking the user to try something new (or new to them) and non-mainstream, "pay more for this risky new thing" isn't a very attractive proposition.
- zmmmmm 15y agoIt depends what you mean by successful. The Android tablets are selling reasonably well - ASUS is claiming ~1 million sales (to consumers) and forecasting 1m more by the end of the year. It ain't iPad level but it's a strong showing and it's just one tablet out of half a dozen.
- fpgeek 15y agoMoreover, ASUS is following the Transformer up with the eee Pad Slider in September and a second-generation Transformer using Tegra 3 Kal-El (though the release-date rumors for this vary). In other words, ASUS isn't just talking the talk, they're walking the walk.
- Tichy 15y agoCompanies seem to give in too quickly, though. The tablet thing has only just started. Most non-ipad tablets simply sucked. Instead of giving in, they should create better tablets.
- flogic 15y agoI agree. It's going to take some time for manufacturers to pull their heads out of there asses on tablets. If you want to compete with Apple, your tablet has to be cheaper. Otherwise, why would anyone buy it? And, it has to not completely suck.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]