There really isn’t much of a “tablet” market
marco.org
marco.org
Here's how it unfolded chronologically then:
1) "no one can complete with Apple because of the quality of design"
2) "no one can compete with Apple, only geeks buy Android phones"
3) "no one can compete with Apple, except if you are a geek or want a phone on a non AT&T network"
4) "no one can compete with Apple, except if you want a non AT&T phone or want a low end handset"
5) "Ok, Android is outselling Apple, but Apple is more profitable"
So... why, exactly will the tablet market be different?
Back when they just had OSX, market-share meant nothing. It was all about quality. When Android released and iPhone was dominating the smartphone sector? Market-share was all you'd hear about. When Android surpassed iPhone in market-share? It's all about the size of the App Store, man. Android Market set to outnumber the App Store? Doesn't matter, look at how much more money Apple's paid to its developers! (Let's conveniently ignore the fact that the App Store's been around about twice as long).
Now we get the see the same arguments happen all over again for the tablet market. I, for one, will enjoy watching it repeat itself with my bowl of popcorn.
Edit: So how am I supposed to interprete the downvotes? Is it just a vote against me being dumb enough to forget it? That the argument doesn't exist? Please explain!
But every time Apple jumped up a rank in US or global sales there was a gleefulness and gloating aspect to the posts that would report it.
When rumours of the iPhone was leaked there was enormous sledging of Apple. People literally made mocking posts about how ridiculous a one button phone would be. Apple and their one button phone were the laughing stock of tech punditry. For months people wrote about what idiots Apple and their fanboys were.
Then Apple demoed the iPhone, and everybody suddenly realised that the "drooling idiot fanboys" were right after all.
So yes, guys like Gruber are being hypocritical with their banner waving "we're number one" stuff. but they took so much crap for so long, that to resist that urge to thumb your nose and do the "nyah nyah I told you so" thing would require super-human self-control.
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In market share there is almost never a complete victory. Even Microsoft almost but not quite had a complete victory in the OS wars. They could have killed off Apple, but didn't.
Now, 10-15 years later, if you looked at profitability or the market cap you'd be forgiven for thinking that Apple had won that war. But if you look at market share you'd still think that Apple had one foot in the grave.
The problem is that all these one dimensional views are (surprise!) myopic. We love to make straight-up comparisons of Apple and Microsoft - but Apple is predominantly a hardware/entertainment company and Microsoft is predominantly a software/business company. It's like trying to compare an insurance company with a supermarket (which is possible, but it requires hard work and patient analysis, neither of which pundits are generally blessed with an abundance of).
Would we compare Microsoft and Dell, and say that Microsoft had "beaten" Dell? No? Why not? After all, there are people who hold the view that Microsoft encouraged and pushed the commoditisation of PC hardware, which meant that the hardware manufacturer's profitability kept getting chipped [sic] away at.
Fanboy gladiatorial aspirations aside, you could probably make a better argument about Microsoft being at war with its hardware partners (atn: Nokia -> Microsoft is not your friend) like HP and Dell than it being at war with Apple.
I think the author states a good reason -- that a tablet device is more of a luxury item that appeals to people who want to geek out with it; it makes this a whole different context.
If Honeycomb devices can compete against iOS, then so much the better for everyone (even Apple); however, there are significantly different market segments that will be drawn to a device that is free-with-subscription and a market willing to pay $500+ to play.
Institutional adoption of Honeycomb based devices has big potential to jumpstart Android on tablets (i.e. schools buying devices), but it's pretty safe to say the consumer marketplace is locked up. Apple can compete on price in the tablet marketplace, so until there's somebody willing to subsidize the tablet -- like the phones are -- there's really no choice.
Here in Australia the number 2 carrier recently did a sale on their self-branded version of the ZTE V9 tablet (7", Android 2.2, surprisingly good resisitive touch screen: http://www.zte.com.au/optus/V9.htm) for $99 including 3GB of pre-paid data. It sold out country-wide in less than a day.
The ZTE V9 is no iPad, but the speed it sold (in non-trivial numbers) indicates significant demand, at the right price. Some manufactures are willing to meet that price.
Coincidentally, the same thing happened with the 7" Samsung Tablet. Samsung dropped the price here to under $300, and suddenly you can no longer buy it because everytime stock comes in it sells out immediately. I don't think that's the market behavior for a luxury good.
Just like you might find it hard to justify a point'n'shoot camera, an iPod, or a Nintendo DS if you already have an iPhone that can already do those things, even if not quite as well.
However, if the price drops even further, then it can become something to buy and leave lying around the house for occasional use, or to try out on a whim.
I'm not sure there's a big market for high-end tablets, just as I think high-end point'n'shoots, iPods, and portable games machines might face a shrinking market in future.
Neither Google nor Microsoft will ever be able to tailor their software to other manufacturers’ specific (and varied) hardware devices
...followed by...
Anyone can cobble together the same processors, DRAM, flash, and radios as Apple, put them into a plastic case
What is the iPad? It's a touch-sensitive screen. It has a border and a few buttons. What is every non-Apple tablet? The exact same thing. In terms of other hardware, tablets are far less varied than PCs.
Microsoft and Google don't have to tailor their operating systems to varied hardware -- in terms of interface, all tablets are the same. The problem is they're a few years behind Apple in the whole software ecosystem.
The big point, and here Macro and I would certainly agree, the iPad has a reasonable software ecosystem and everyone else doesn't. I don't see Android or Windows making a dent in this anytime soon but, assuming the tablet market has legs, it will happen eventually. But for now, it doesn't seem like a non-Apple tablet is a good buy.
How true is this? I thought some tablets have navigation buttons while others do not. I also thought that there was some variation in screen sizes, and therefore screen real-estate. I also thought that Microsoft, in particular, seeks to support older windows software (I'm getting this notion from the Win8 video that was released the week prior to WWDC), and therefore has additional user interface concerns. Isn't there at least one tablet out there that has a stylus?
I understand how easy it is to think "glass rectangles; how different can they be?" but I think that's a big mistake. Because of this, I disagree with the notion that the author contradicted himself.
Microsoft does seek to support older windows software but the user interface concerns comes from the fact that they're bringing that to touchable glass rectangle hardware.
On Android, menu is functionally equivalent to right-click, which means it either hides complexity or it's a dumping ground, depending on your perspective. I don't care for it.
The lack of a OS-level back button on iOS means most apps put a back button somewhere on screen, or there's page-swiping. Generally you know where pressing that button will take you. The vast majority of the time it will never take you out of your current application.
That is not the case on Android; you can dump yourself back to the home screen from a web browser if you hit Back one too many times. And then there's the "activity stack," an OS-level concept that interacts with the Home and Back buttons.
Maybe the buttons themselves are not differentiators, but they imply or enforce different assumptions which in turn inform the way people use and develop for the device.
So you go back and ask "What was it?"
And that is what market research is all about.
I don't know, I've not surveyed thousands of iPad owners why they bought, how much they use now, if they would upgrade, so I can only go by the limited exposure to friends, family, and various hacker types.
The itch it seemed to scratch, which was un-met by the 'touch' was "instant on access to email and web."
The 'conventional' wisdom was that this "wasn't enough" to justify a $500 - $900 purchase. Or a laptop would be the answer. Apparently the wisdom was wrong.
There are other things it does of course, and more all the time. I got into a fierce one sided debate inside Google where I was advocating e-readers were important and being countered with "your stupid, I can do that on my phone, no one will buy an e-reader who isn't stupid." (Almost word for word, seriously) You can't see what you can't see.
So while I agree that a strong brand can sell stuff which isn't useful, developing beyond the afficiandos takes actual value which the iPad (and tablets) seem to have.
I've never heard a potential iPad owner give a reason for wanting an iPad. The iPad is a fashion accessory. I've seen people crowd around them at parties during the early days lustfully wanting it, but no one mentioned apps or email or anything like that. Or anything about the experience at all.
From the developer of the highly successful Professor Layton games for Nintendo DS:
"from our analysis, we found that light users – users who had the Nintendo DS Lite system – were more likely to possess a game system for the sensation of having a popular item than because they were seeking ultimate excitement and quality from games."
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/iwata/iwata_asks_-_...
Sounds like the description of a lot of iPhone and iPad users to me. (Note I have a DS and an iPhone, and family have iPads, and think they are all great products).
And there are folks who use them as color e-readers too. I've got my entire O'Reilly book collection on mine, not something I thought would be useful but it is. And there are the kids in schools using them to replace textbooks.
Its hard to get real data without actually polling those users to see if they are 'just experimenting' or if they have changed their workflow to require an iPad or tablet. If its the latter the change is durable.
Sales volume of 15 million for the iPad 1? [1] And more than 20 million projected for the iPad 2? That many 'light' users who have $500 minimum to shell out for a fashion accessory? (if they are re-buying and the bizjournal article says they are) then really that is over $1000 for that accessory. So I'm interested in what the actual use case is that it putting iPads into people's hands and keeping them there.
[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/03/14/apples-ip...
> Microsoft and Google don't have to tailor their operating systems to varied hardware -- in terms of interface, all tablets are the same.
This seems to be the logic so often applied to Apple.
1) Assume only Apple endorsed features are important
2) Disregard all non-Apple endorsed features on competitors
3) Declare all competitors are just inferior copies of Apple devices
The reality is that there are extremely useful features on the non-Apple tablets. While it certainly remains to be seen how much consumer interest they get, it's very premature to write them off. I especially think that Google has a great chance to differentiate with its online services - more so than on the phone.
My girlfriend is the target audience for an iPad. She's not great at computers, she consumes media but doesn't create her own. She wanted an iPad and so I got her one for Christmas. She loved it, at least at first. But I rarely see her using it (and I don't use mine much either). When she wants to get on the internet quickly she pulls out her macbook. The iPad really is a device that you use for a specific purpose, it's not the low-level general purpose machine that it's made out to be. I would say ditto for the rest of the tablets as well.
I don't think it's because tablets are a bad idea, I just don't think they are very good at this point. They can't keep up with a desktop web browser (the reason most people use computers) and they aren't very easy to use.
Apple will enjoy for a while and Androids will crush in 2 years (unless Oracle wins it's lawsuit).
I like that, but I don't think it's true. Apple computers are (in my opinion) more reliable hardware; a lot of the appeal to Apple laptops are their simply designed hardware and their durability.
However, the opposite point is true: Apple's competitors are not in the software game.
People keep asking if the "tablet" market is going to be like the smartphone market or the iPod (i.e. PMP) market. I think it simply is the smartphone market. People like Marco don't want this to be true, because they think Apple has already lost this market. That's why there's so much effort expended trying to desperately to separate the two. It's like the old business school cliche of "what business are you in?". The trains thought they were in the train business, but really they were in the people moving business and got disrupted by aircraft. Tablets and smartphones are just two ways of accessing the web (in its widest sense). At some point we're either going to start calling tablets "phones" or phones "tablets" and the two will merge into a range of devices with no clear transition point.
Citation needed. The original Galaxy Tab sold ~2 million in the first 3 months, the Playbook sold ~250k in the first 3 months. [1]. Were Windows tablets selling that well?
[1] - http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/18/250000-blackberry-playbook-tab...
But during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Friday, a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers around the world since product’s formal introduction in late September.
From: http://ngadgeti.blogspot.com/2008/04/hp-pavilion-tx1209-revi...
With that said, I think its absurd to say that the market for non-iPad tablets is the same today as it was 18 months ago. People are definitely more interested in tablets now. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 50M tablet PCs with Win8 sold next year.
Hardware has changed radically. Old tablets had battery life of 3 hours, new tablets 8-10 hours. Old tablets weighed 4lb, new tablets 1lb. Old tablets needed a stylus or used poor resistive single touch screens. New tablets use responsive multitouch screens. Old tablets were dependent on wifi and did not have GPS. New tablets can have constant connectivity and can include awesome location based services. Old tablets cost ~$1k or more. New tablets cost < $500. Old tablets mostly ran Windows that was relatively poorly adapted to tablets. New tablets run beautiful dedicated tablet OSes.
There's just no comparison at all between these products, there's no way you can just make an assertion about the market for them being the same.
If you look at the way android started to win in the mobile OS market it's through the sheer number of offerings. Yes, there are some Android phones out there which are blazingly fast or have a great screen. At the end of the day, Android is winning because everyone accepted it as the one thing to use to go after iOS (except HP with the acquisition of Palm).
The true value Apple is offering, as many HN readers already understand, but the author of this article does not, is the integrated experience (on top of being the first to market). Apple's integrated experience may be lacking some of the features (for now) that make Android really awesome but the sheer perfection of the things that iOS _does_ do is outstanding. Now let me go back to my android phone...