Honestly? I'm not sure, especially when it comes to the tablets. There are the obvious reasons for phones: - Alice doesn't like Apple devices (whether those r

Honestly? I'm not sure, especially when it comes to the tablets. There are the obvious reasons for phones: - Alice doesn't like Apple devices (whether those reasons are valid or prejudice doesn't matter). Phones are as much about personal preference as technical quality. - Bob doesn't want to change carriers, and the only smartphones his carrier has are Android devices. - Charlie just wants a phone and wants the cheapest device available. Until the 3GS was made available for $0 on contract, iPhones always cost more than $0 up front. - Denise wants the cheapest phone off-contract. This is usually going to be an Android device. - Eric is a specs junkie and buys things based on specs. He has to have the fastest, biggest, most capacious thing. - Fran has been convinced over the years that specs matter, but she doesn't have the technical knowledge to be able to tell the difference between specs that matter and specs that don't. She's also the one who will buy a 15 megapixel pocket camera because she's been told time and again that megapixels matter. - Gene genuinely prefers products by {HTC,Samsung,Motorola}. See the discussion about Alice. - Harriet goes into the store and asks the salesperson what she should buy. The salesperson (Ian) directs her to his choice in phone—which might be based on the vig he gets, not on any particular benefit of the phone to the consumer. Ian may also have any of the reasons noted above, or he might listen to the customer's needs. For tablets, the carriers don't matter. Price might matter, but most Android devices aren't doing so well on the matter of price: the top tier tablets are as much or more than the iPad, and the bottom tier Android tablets tend to be crap. The only exceptions to the bottom tier "tending to be crap" appear to be the Kindle Fire, Kobo Vox, and B&N Nook—and those aren't counted as "real" Android tablets in any case. Personally, I'd only recommend an Android phone if there weren't any iPhones or WP7 phones on a person's carrier—and I'd seriously suggest changing carriers if they could reasonably do so. I can't think of a single reason that I'd ever recommend an Android tablet (or a Playbook) other than possibly the Vox, Fire, or Nook (and even there I'd make sure that the user really wanted a tablet and not just a reader, in which case I'd recommend an eink version). I keep watching and hoping that someone comes up with a good tablet that gives Apple some competition—but it isn't there yet, and I don't see anything happening in 2012 to change that.