"Make sure we’re winning"
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Remember 2009? iOS was ahead by a wide margin. The HTC Hero had just been released and Android was in that "this is cool, but could go either way" period. I remember considering buying the Hero but holding back, unsure whether the platform would take off.
It did. I don't see any reason why we won't see the same effect with the tablet market. It's just a matter of time.
Now, you might disagree with Gruber. That's perfectly reasonable. But his post is illustrative: if you can't state more clearly why Android phones have been successful, you can't state with confidence the same effect will apply to tablets.
[1]http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/27/android-tablets
a)Phone with keyboard
b)One that will allow you to transfer music without a hefty itunes install
c)Phone with a large screen
d)Clamshell form factor
e)Slider form factor
f)Network effect - android phones are being sold in more places by a larger number of manufacturers. This has an effect in developing countries.
g) Network effect #2 - Till the Iphone arrived on Verizon there were some customers who had no choice but to go Android because what good is an Iphone when you know your home gets lousy coverage from AT&T. Ditto for places where Sprint or T-Mobile have a better network. The mobile network is not completely commoditised - given a particular area usually there is a single network company that provides perceptibly better coverage
h)Rate of change - something new is always launching which keeps the Android hype machine going
I think rate of change helps, but that's not really choice.
I will concede I like android's customization and less locked down nature. That's kind of choice but more like freedom.
I'm not convinced that android tablets won't, but it's fallacious to say they will because the phones did, without identifying why the cause will apply to both.
a) Part of what made the iPhone and the iPod touch such tough devices to compete against was the constraints imposed by the mobile form factor. Down at 600 Mhz on a 4 inch screen software efficiency and well designed software matter a lot more than on a 10 inch screen with a 1.6 Gig dual core chip with a large battery.
b) Form factors - Unless a smaller Ipad comes in.
c) Tablets are largely media consumption devices - either webpages, videos, music, pdfs etc. I dont reach out to my tablet the way I reach out to my phone to be my data connected interface in the real world. I switch it on when I have some time available and I would like to consume some media. At this point I find it easier to consume media on a Android device than I do on an iOS device ( dont need to transcode every single video out there ) and transferring files to the device is easy even on linux. Actually it would be interesting to hear from others if there are differences in app usage patterns between an ipad and an iphone of this is just a personal quirk on my part.
d) 4G - Unless Apple jumps onboard. I forgot to mention this on my earlier post - I use my phone as a data modem all the time and once you are used to 4G speeds, its really hard to go back to 3G.
b) This is the only real advantage to Android tablets in the real world, but smaller tablets are what you claim in (c): they're consumption devices.
c) Your use of tablets is as a media consumption device. That's not how the iPad is used (heard about Photoshop Touch?). It's also not necessary to transcode videos if you use tools like AirVideo.
d) Apple will use "4G" (that is, LTE) when the economics (price, availability, and effect on battery life) make sense, just as they did with 3G. Personally, I'll take a little slower speed now for more battery life.
Given what you've posted, I'd suggest stepping back a bit from your assumptions: they're very geek-oriented. Just because you have a lot of video you'd have to transcode doesn't mean that others do; just because you use your phone as a data modem all the time doesn't mean that others do.
I'm quite often surprised at how people use their phones, and I don't think that the iPhone is the right choice for everyone. We as geeks need to start listening to how other people want their technology want to work for them.
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.
b) …but requiring the purchase of a third-party utility to do so easily. (DoubleTwist, I've heard. I don't know as I don't have an Android phone.)
c) Yes, Android is the platform that's decided to go the McDonald's Super Size Me route. This matters to some people, but I think there is a point of ridiculousness about this.
d/e) I haven't seen any clamshell Android phones in any of the carrier stores, or on the carrier websites in Canada. I could just be missing them, but what's mostly sold for Android here are slabs and slider slabs (with the latter taking up a small number).
f) I believe the network effect is much stronger with the iPhone. A colleague of my wife's asked his friends on Facebook what device he should get (asking between the Galaxy II and the Galaxy Nexus S, IIRC)—every single one of his friends said iPhone (I also said iPhone, but I was also able to speak to his use case). (Note as well that the network effect is stronger when you have fewer choices. You don't get choice burnout.)
g) This is an American problem. Please remember that things are different in other countries.
h) This also results in exhaustion and confusion. The aforementioned friend really didn't know the difference between the two Android devices. He'd settled on those two in all likelihood because they were (prior to the introduction of the Note) the most heavily promoted Android devices on the carriers in Canada.
I would argue that there are only two possible advantages to Android tablets:
a) Multiple form factors (size, convertability, etc.);
b) Rate of change (this also has the downside mentioned above; no one will have a clue what to buy because there are too many variations and if they wait another week, someone else is going to release something Even Better Than The Last Android Tablet).
OK. Strike that last. Real people will be confused by the various Android tablets and pick the iPad because it solves their perceived needs very quickly. Other tablet manufacturers need to figure out the single message that they're going to sell to customers—because what they're doing now isn't working and it won't work. If you sell a tablet on specs like you sold computers on specs, you've already lost the simplicity argument.
To have a good music experience without syncing one's library requires a great data plan and a really good streaming service. The latter may be coming along—not so much in Canada—but the former is rather expensive.
Furthermore, the Android customers might think of their smartphone as just a phone and not care much about the "smart" part, whereas they want a standarized tablet which runs the same software as their friends' tablets. If you buy an iPad, you'll know that all of your software runs on the next iPad you buy. You don't do that with all the Android tablets, you don't even know if you can buy one with the same screen size next year.
If I'm a company or school and I have to buy tablets and software and education of employees/teachers, I want to know that the tablets I buy in 2-3-4 years time will run the same software that I invest in today. So the iPad could get the same 'monopoly' as MS Windows had in the 90'ies.
Furthermore, the more I think about it, the more I think Nokia+WP7 will be a big player in the emerging/low end market and could potentially pinch Android. So, I think it bodes poorly for Google if Android on tablet today is where Android on phones were a few years ago.
Also, if you look at the link that I provided, I don't know how you can be so "sure" that developers would agree with you.
The point is that I'm not sure how my parent is defining "winning"...or, for that matter, how Rubin defines it..but the only way I can think of is market share, which, despite your assurances, is a silly metric.
Here's my simple suggestion: make Android Market gift cards. iTunes gift cards are HUGE sellers and have become a standard gift, especially for people you don't know well.
Someone with an Android Market gift card will be motivated to figure out how to use the market and will get used to the idea of paying for apps. To me, the lack of a gift card shows a lack of commitment to the Market ecosystem.
Android Market gift cards => more money being spent buying apps => more incentive for developers to write apps => more great apps => more incentive to buy an Android Tablet.
Unless there's something I'm not seeing - there's a chicken & egg problem here.
We sometimes give iTunes credit to our son as a gift. He can buy whatever he wants, but his iPhone is not connected to our credit card so he has to limit his spending.
It's dangerous to be disillusioned because you never correct the problem. In Microsoft's case, it seems largely driven by a lack of vision and serious branding issues. I don't know what the deal with Google is, but they might simply believe in their own greatness too much at this point.
There are countless examples of not realizing how bad your products are, but GM and RIM are probably the most dramatic to me.
I can't help but shake the feeling that tablets are just expensive toys with value only in the dewy eyes of Apple fans.
That really goes a bit too far. Oh dear, oh dear, you can almost hear the handwringing going on in Mountain View, because Google are worried (!) about iOS!