5 ms·

One thing is definitely true: a year ago the phrase, "...but it's not really a tablet market, it's an iPad market" was so often used as to become annoying. I ha

• mtgx 14y ago
  Oh yeah, I remember all those articles from people who said that the iPad market is exactly like the iPod market. But I knew then too that it was not true. Two things are different which change the game entirely. First, when the iPod appeared, the whole ecosystem wasn't really about the "OS" of the device, and now iOS has a real competitor in Android, that a lot of other manufacturers can use, while back then there was no such unification from the other manufacturers. This matters because the iPod was a single-task product, while tablets are not. Second, they said that Apple has its own stores, while the others do not. But we're living in a global market now, and Apple's stores are virtually non-existent outside of US. Having 1 or 5 stores in a whole country doesn't make much of a difference. So even if Android tablets completely fail in US, there's a huge market out there for them, outside of US, which is bound to become bigger than the whole "iPad market".
  • bengl3rt 14y ago
    Another important thing to consider is the content that drives the two platforms. If you didn't buy any music from the iTunes store and just ripped stuff from CDs/Napster/Limewire/Kazaa, all the music that worked on your iPod worked on your non-Apple music player as well. Such is not the case with apps. If you've spent a few hundred dollars on apps over the course of a few years using iOS devices, the cost to switch (assuming you care about continuing to use any of those apps once you're on Android) is pretty high.