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Comment by vladok | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely wonder why companies can't get this right. I know Apple is good at what they do, but if you can't play in this game, why bother?

I understand, on one hand, if you're making a budget knock off at 2/3rd the price. Then the lack of polish is forgivable from a business standpoint - the price is your biggest mover.

But if you're competing with the iPad for top of the line why even bother? Why bother overpromising on battery, when the first reviews will prove that false. How does a corporation even assume they will have any success in the market with this type of strategy?

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I think these companies are looking at this from a long term perspective. This and the smartphones are the only growth markets post-PC. Almost everyone will own a smartphone and/or tablet sooner than you think, and just a small portion of that market justifies the current slaughtering they will incur to gain entrance to the market and establish a beachhead. At this point it's a battle to the death for the #2 spot.

Apple has a massive lead by both defining the market and being almost 100% vertically integrated. Where they weren't vertically integrated, they guessed right on the opportunity factor and cut deals for components while the rest of the market was asleep.

Production will eventually level out, and competitive software will get better, and other tablet will eventually be able to turn 90s era PC-like margins on their products. Depending on how smart Apple plays the game (and I am betting on very smart), this may take a few years to over a decade.

Here's what boggles my mind. Motorola was never in the PC business.

Why are Motorola and Nokia following Apple in this direction? If you look at it as a question of where historically these companies have been competitive, they are chasing Apple right into their home turf. I mean, let's say that whatever degree of success Apple has in the smartphone market is due to software/hardware design, marketing, and vertical integration. Isn't software even more of an issue with a larger, more powerful form factor? Isn't vertical integration even more of a factor when there's no "subsidized" phone to buff your margins?

I don't totally believe what I'm saying here to be honest (Android tablets will probably beat Apple in price at some point, for example), but I still find the process odd - 1. Apple enters the cell phone companies' market, 2. Apple creates the tablet market using its cell phone operating system, 3. the cell phone companies follow Apple to the tablet market. Somebody's being led around.

For all the criticism he gets, I think much of this can be laid at Steve Jobs' feet. He has a clear sense of what he wants, he doesn't tolerate not getting it, and while it pisses people off, it shows in the final product. At Sun it became an in house joke after the launch of the "portable" lunch box that Sun can make any type of computer as long as it starts with a workstation. There is weird sort of entrenched notional design and diverging from it is hit by internal anti-bodies. I saw it at Google with some of the strange (and silly) Android vs ChromeOS battles. You can see Dell 'streak' as a similar example.

Apple learned a lot from doing the iPod touch which made the iPad possible, Google never did an Android Touch, so take what you have, hack it to some new requirements and then try to make it work.

I think your comments are a bit too strong for being based on this one review. For example, his battery complaints are not inline with what the rest of the world is seeing.

While Apple certainly has a big lead, I wouldn't conclude from this review that Motorola can't "play in this game". Many of his concerns are things that will be addressed with time (lack of Apps, lack of flash, micro-sd support).

The price is definitely too high, but Motorola needed to start somewhere and a tablet isn't a loss-leader type device.

I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs alone. Many people will look at the numbers and believe they're getting something great, without realizing that the experience will be pretty lousy.

I'm certain the Android tablets will get better quickly, as the phones seem to be, but it obviously just isn't there yet. At this point it seems like Motorola wanted to capitalize on all the uninformed consumers, and those who don't want to buy an Apple product.

> I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs alone.

Actually, I think the opposite is true in the mobile space, after many years of that being the case in the desktop/laptop space.

Consumers just don't care what the processor is or how much memory is in their phone. They _do_ care about whether it is fast, responsive, and has nice and/or flashy experience. Also unlike desktops, they care about how it looks.

Is it surprising the apple is cleaning up, for a change?

> I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs alone.

Really? I don't know anyone besides geeks and neo-philiacs (ie, folks like me) that behave that way.

Most folks (ie, the mass-market) treat tech like they'd treat appliances or cars or other stuff they don't fully understand. They ask folks who do know, visit review sites, and play with what's on the showroom floors.

When there is a large contingent of these that infer that the iPad is the best, the mass market buys it (as sales numbers show).

Well, there is a funny and sad at the same time case: cameras. My impression is that for a large portion of population the only thing that matters is megapixels.

That's because for most of the population, they don't understand photography. They have to make some kind of comparison, and megapixels are the easiest - a linear number that presumably indicates more of whatever the camera is doing.

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