Will Android Tablets Overtake the iPad? | Hacker News Reader

Will Android Tablets Overtake the iPad?

thefastertimes.com

26 pointsbane65 comments

Doubt it. If as rumored, Apple releases an iPad 'mini', I think this is going to be an iPod situation, where the iPad grabs the majority of the market, with a lot of smaller manufacturers picking up the bits.

The thing is, Android phones were pushed by carriers. For tablets, this hardly happens, although I've seen "free tablet" promotions when getting a new internet connection, but that has hardly done anything as far as I know.

The Kindle fire might be a contender, but I don't really see that as a real competitor, and that's hardly Android. The software quality also seems to be very low to me.

And then you have Microsoft, who is making the same mistakes they made the first time they attempted a tablet. They will maybe sell a few, but if the sales of the 'ultrabooks' are a good indication, expensive tablets running Windows 8 won't be the success they're hoping for.

I know dozens of people having an iPad, including complete non-techies - and they love it. I know 1 guy with an Asus transformer, and 1 with a Galaxy tab 10", both IT guys. The Asus's build quality surprised me in the positive way, the galaxy tab in a negative way. In both cases, I thought the software was useless, and web-browsing slow and sluggish compared to my iPad 2.

That said, the moment I can order a Nexus 7 here in Belgium, I'm getting one.

> I know 1 guy with an Asus transformer

I don't know why people are making such a big deal about Samsung tablets and Kindle Fires but completely ignoring the Asus Transformer line. The Asus Transformer Pad Infinity is an amazing tablet with good hardware that runs stock Jelly Bean.

I've had a Transformer Prime for almost a year and it's been a great device, but it's like no one has even heard of it. It's a really weird situation, perhaps caused by a lack of advertising (much like the Galaxy Nexus).

Nah, people were going crazy about the Prime pre-launch. And Asus messed it up with delays and poor WiFi, non-existant GPS and then srewing customers who did buy it by announcing "better" model soon after.

I kept hearing about these issues, but never saw them myself. Maybe those people having the issues were holding the tablet wrong?

Besides, the Transformer Pad Infinity hasn't had these issues, has it?

I didn't have any major problems with the Transformer Prime. GPS on that big tablet is pretty much useless anyway, and the battery life given my the keyboard was awesome on conference trips. Here is a liveblog I wrote with vim on the Prime: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/symfony-live/

I even had a Ubuntu chroot on the machine for Node.js projects, and if the keyboard hadn't been so bad that could be now my primary computer. Instead, I switched it to Nexus 7 and again do any longer writing on my 11" MBA...

I don't know, I bought one months ago and I love it to bits. It's the best tablet I've ever owned, hands down, and I used to have an iPad before.

Not only is iPad popular, it also has an incredible amount of market penetration in a large variety of industries. You have airlines talking about giving their pilots iPads, you have schools giving their teachers and even students iPads for classroom learning, you have car manufacturers designing iPad docks for their cars with integrated controls... it is extremely unlikely that a competitor is going to be able to dislodge Apple from their leadership position anytime soon.

If I were an Apple competitor, I'd forget about tablets and smartphones and invest all my resources into developing the next "big thing". The reason is simple: Apple cannot be beat in its own game. So the smart thing to do is to innovate a new revolutionary device, something that will create its own category.

I'd say that the only tech company who has the potential for a feat of this magnitude is Google. However, even they seem to lack focus. That's one huge advantage that Apple had: Steve Jobs' extraordinary focus and vision. If you look at Google, you see that they are working on cool projects like self-driving cars and Google Glass, but what they need is a technology that converges these inventions in one physical device. And that's possible only with a visionary who will set a clear and ambitious direction for all the various product teams at Google.

I think there's a ton of room at the bottom. There was a time when DVD players and home computers were out of the reach of the poor or lower middle class. Most (responsible) people can't afford a $500+ tablet, but the promise of tablet computing still applies to them. It's a lie to say that the promise of tablet computing can only be accomplished in a $500+ package. There's tons of room for tablets that are $250 or less - see all the "low end" phone providers that now have Android offerings.

There's room at the bottom in terms of market share, but not in terms of profits. Android has captured a bigger chunk of the market, but Apple is reaping most of the profits (since their devices are high margin) and is therefore in a much better position to innovate or leap on opportunities that come up. I mean, who wouldn't want to sit on a $120+ billion warchest?

What's going to be really interesting is when (if) the "iPad Mini" comes out. There was an article on Ars Technica last month where a reputable analyst claimed Apple found a way to manufacture iPad Minis with the last generation iPad's components. What that means is that even at $250, the device would be extremely high margin. Not only would it allow Apple to lock down the lower market segment, but also result in a huge increase in profits. From a business standpoint it seems like a no-brainer, because a cheap and yet high margin device is not something that other manufacturers can imitate.

As a user, why would anyone be concerned with the OEM's profit margin?

Apple is reaping most of the profits (since their devices are high margin)

Why would anyone except Apple and its shareholders care about that? Why would you care about that?

All that should tell you is that you (as an Apple-customer) is getting ripped off.

Not really. As a consumer, I am perfectly fine with Apple making a lot of money as long as I get a high quality product with superior user experience. The way I look at it is that I am paying a premium for a much better product.

> Google, you see that they are working on cool projects like self-driving cars and Google Glass, but what they need is a technology that converges these inventions in one physical device.

One physical device is unnecessary and seems unwieldy. One unified product offering is what Google needs. Such would be device agnostic.

If I were an Apple competitor, I'd forget about tablets and smartphones and invest all my resources into developing the next "big thing". The reason is simple: Apple cannot be beat in its own game.

With this line of thinking we'd have iPhones and Nokia clones.

With the recent upshot in Android tablet-marketshare, I say you dissmiss too easily.

Doubt it too. What underwhelms me the most are the apps/general software.

I have a Nexus 7 and I don't really know what to do with it anymore. I played around with it a lot, and put some emulators on it, but having to go back to a file browser for reading a book or putting on music is giving me a PC feeling, and I don't really want a tablet to feel like a PC.

Furthermore, it's no fun to do web browsing, because the browser has very small touch targets and I have to take a lot of steps accessing my bookmarks I sync via Chrome for Mac.

Listening to music is bad. The player software sucks, it lacks any finish and small subtle things I like on the iOS version. And the headphone jack delivers bad sound quality.

Apps are generally blown up phone versions. The bigger screen is not really used.

I don't like the software buttons, they tempt me to get accidentally touched. I would prefer a physical button.

And another mild annoyance is the button to switch it on, which is on the site and I very often touch it when trying to make it louder. Also you always have to touch that small button instead of having a button under the screen to activate the device which is very slow.

When you have kids, get them an iPad, especially with the "boring" grid layout of icons, its easier for them to access apps. And they stay in a app, without touching one of the always on software buttons.

Maybe my general problem is, I don't want to use Googles ecosystem. I don't think it's very likable. For instance the music app. For Google it's something they put on there, because you need it, but they put no real effort behind it. From Apple I get the impression, people are working on it, who want to achieve a great music listening experience. It's the same with buying content. I don't really feel it at Google. It caters more to the nerd, where is the humanity?

This should not prevent you from getting one. But I very much doubt that an Android tablet is as useful for the average user as an iPad and therefore gaining as much market share. Maybe Amazon will find a way to gain marketshare with their ecosystem, but the software appears to suck. And Microsoft, they will struggle first to get decent applications for their tablets, and who will do RT software, when the full desktop version could be right around the corner?

The Nexus 7, I handed it over to my wife, she uses it as an e-reader, the screen is great for that. Personally I'm looking forward to a smaller iPad 3 or iPad mini. Maybe a Surface in the near future.

I see tablets and PCs merging more in the future, as the current trends indicate. Tablets will become smarter, PCs dumber. They'll meet somewhere in the middle.

That being the case, the market is too big, and too important, to have 1 single hardware/software vendor dominate it in the way iPod dominated the music player market. The iPod's dominance had a negative effect on that market; it effectively killed it. And once Apple found something more profitable, they stopped innovating on it as well.

I wrote something about this in http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/tablet-productivity/

Basically I see the culture (especially in business apps and communication) slowly adapt to tablets and smartphones, instead of them converging with text-based PC ideas

If the iPad mini rumors end up being true, I'll sell my Nexus 7 for the iPad mini. I've had a terrible experience with both the hardware and tablet versions of Android apps.

I'd be happy to get $100 out of my Nexus 7 that's how unhappy I've been.

If you are happy to ship to New Zealand I am keen (Nexus 7 is expensive here). I already bought one second hand for my brother but I want one for myself (now I found out I love Nexus 7 more than an iPad!) c d r c a t A T g m a i l . c o m

PS: This thread already removed from HN, so hopefully it is OK that I am adding irrelevant comment noise?

Sure it will. Everyone who says no is (in my oppinion) trapped in the famous Apple Reality Distortion Field(tm) ;)

It's the same situation as with the iPhone. People said "noooo, the iPhone will be king ever!!". Nope.

Honestly, how could this even happen? With one tablet? Or 2? Where is the diversity? Where is the low-cost option? Where is my tablet with keyboard attached? Etc. etc.

Android is about choice, it will win this, undoubtly. As long as Apple doesn't produce much more different hardware and delivers at much more price points, they will not win the whole market. But well. There is always the high margin top niche ;)

> Where is the diversity? Where is the low-cost option?

Right now there's the choice of the iPad 2, or "The New iPad" and soon we can add the "iPad Mini."

> Where is my tablet with keyboard attached? Etc. etc.

Logitech makes a really slick one.

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/tablet-accessories/keyboard-ca...

No, seriously. There is one iPad, not the new one and the old one. So soon, there will be 2 ipads, virtually the same devices with different screen sizes.

But people want choice. I'm not sure if this is different in the US or wherever you come from but it's frightening how many women i know who choose their phones based on the color(!). Then there are people only buying phones with hardware keyboards, some which want it slide-out some on front. Then there are students that buy the lowcost variants of android gadgets, etc.

In all: There will never be "the one device everyone wants". No. No. No. Saying otherwise is just ignorant.

> it's frightening how many women i know who choose their phones based on the color(!).

I don't know why that's frightening. For many people, almost any current smart phone will meet their communication requirements, so why shouldn't they choose the one that they like the look of? It's no stranger than buying a watch on style rather than the accuracy of its stopwatch or purported ability to work at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

> No, seriously. There is one iPad, not the new one and the old one.

Not what I see on the Apple website. iPad 2, non-retina, but still a damn good tablet for $400 and the new iPad. Add in a 7" option, and that's a good selection.

I was looking at android devices with a view to making a purchase this very weekend. There seems to me to be very little choice, just lots of different brands telling you there is choice. The variance in pricing is very close and the budget conscious are poorly servered. I didn't end up buying anything.

No, I can't think of a single product range where apple held on to a 70%+ market share despite lower priced and more feature rich competitors coughipodcough

Uh yeah.. "mp3 players". lol. When i commute to work everyday, lots of people have headphones. But noone (really noone) has an iPod or other MP3 player. Phones have replaced those in my area and surely will replace MP3 players whereever they are still bought.

That's not the point.

The point is, in an area of unsubsidised devices, Apple held their own against cheaper alternatives for as long as the product category was relevant.

The iPod has 4 form factors.

The iPod had one form factor for the first three years of its existence. The iPad already has two distinct models and is likely to have a third this month.

Are you calling the iPad 2 and iPad 3 "distinct models"? I think you are misunderstanding what the grandparent means when they talk about choice.

I suspect you are both correct and incorrect.

A more interesting question to ask is this, "Will I ever be able to write a sophisticated application for Android tablet that runs unchanged on more devices than I can for the iPad?"

The implication of that question is the 'friction' of delivering applications on Android, its very high given the diversity. The current best shot at answering 'yes' here is for the Kindle Fire and that says volumes.

I think you're kidding yourself.

People wanting choice might be why us nerds choose Android but it is not why the average the consumer does. The average consumer does not know better either way whether they would prefer iOS, Android, or other.. they just need a new phone because their old one broke and "hmm I guess this one looks ok". The average consumer gets an Android phone because they walk into a carrier store needing a new phone and ultimately end up going with the option that earns the salespeople the largest commission. And this average consumer I'm describing accounts for 95% of the market.

This effect largely doesn't apply to tablet consumers.

This whole "the average consumer" thing is tiring. Can we just treat people as people and not cast wide nets on the non-HN reading population? Just because a person is not a programmer doesn't mean they are unable to think for themselves and just mindless buy whatever the person standing in front of them tells them to buy.

Uh sure. In that case, go ahead and just substitute every occurrence of "average consumers" with "all consumers" in what I said above. Though I'd be over-generalizing it would still pretty much true.

I didn't say that just because a person is not a programmer that they are unable to think for themselves. A vast majority of people are completely out of the loop when it comes technology and have learned to rely on the judgement of others who are more informed when it comes to technology purchasing decisions. This isn't "mindless" or inability to think for themselves, in fact it's the smartest decision most people can make. We all do it when outside our fields of expertise.

There a ton of extremely competent people that are technologically clueless. To believe otherwise is bubble thinking.

You can be out of the loop on something and still have an opinion on it. In fact, most opinions are not well-informed ones. Go read any political discussion and you'll see a lot of strong opinions of complicated issues that boil down to a feeling the person has.

Just examine the things that you buy; surely you don't mindlessly buy whatever the experts say you should, right? I know almost nothing about cars, but I still have an opinion on which I buy.

The only thing "choice" does for the average consumer is confuse them and decrease their post-sale satisfaction in the product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...

People who are not nerds pick Android devices not because of choice, but because of price. That's going to last for a bit longer until the iPad Mini comes out. After that, there won't be any real reason to buy an Android tablet other than to pay homage to the childish nerd fantasy of "openness".

"people who are not nerds" is not a singular group who you can stereotype like that. People chose the things they buy for a variety of reasons, and yes, price and choice are among those reasons.

I had to break it to you, but the high end Android phones sell really well.

They do. They are on cheaper contracts and available for less. I would say that it's a fairly safe bet to suggest that very little of, for arguments sake lets say the S3 sells sim free or off contract. It is also fair to say that Android devices got to their current position via heavy subsidies and cheap contracts. Giving the carriers the power that they wanted was just about the stupidest move Google has ever pulled. They really screwed consumers with that move.

If the iPad mini (or whatever it is actually going to be called) comes out at $199, that takes a lot of room out of the bottom of the market. If it is $249 or $299, then the Fire and other have some space to play in.

I think Apple's strategy here is to keep the price pressure on for the bottom end of the market. Since their margins are better than everyone else's, they can give up some of that to deliver a 7" tablet that keeps the competitors in the low price ghetto, struggling to compete, while Apple makes $$ in the high end.

I absolutely agree but I am guessing a price tag of $300 which wouldn't quite achieve keeping the competition at bay.

If they repeat their iPod strategy, then $199 is the 7" price point. I agree, $299 is not going to put the pricing pressure on the low-end.

So, the Shuffle was to put pressure on the low end of the market?

If they can sell a tablet for $199 and still make $30 profit, they can put a heck of a lot of price pressure on competitors.

All I know is that after having the Nexus 7, the iPad (3, which I also have) feels like a burden to use. Slower, double the weight, not nearly as portable and iOS feels byzantine next to Jelly Bean. My friends universally share my sentiments.

Apple market share will fall over time to 20%-30%. You can't cater to all users with a single product, and they don't bring enough innovation to make their product a must-have.

My other take: no. Highly customized Android tablets will (Kindle Fires and Nook tablets). Most users don't root them; they use them as the walled gardens they're designed to be. Pure Android devices will continue to be a minority. (OP's article suggests this, with Fire's at 50% of "Android" tablet market)

To me, a Kindle Fire is as much an "Android" tablet as a Nexus 7 is a "Linux" tablet.

I don't think Fred Wilson's point was that they all use a common interface. Being a VC, I'm guessing the app compatibility is the thing he cares about.

Without rooting, you already have more freedom with android: you can install any application outside of google market.

Android may overtake iPad or not - what are the real implications of this? I think it'll stabilize at some point where either iPad has a little more market share or little less.

Practically it doesn't really matter much. The iOS ecosystem will still thrive, and I personally I think a bit of healthy competition is exactly what we need to push the tablet world forward.

How come people don't consider ebooks as competitors to the tablets?

I had a first generation iPad, and I did use it a lot. Then I got a notebook computer to replace my desktop, and started using that more.

I pretty much only used my iPad while commuting, and then made an impulse purchase and got a Kindle. I find I use my Kindle all the time, and haven't touched the iPad for over a year now.

As a device that sits between a phone and a notebook/desktop, I think ebook readers are viable competition to tablets

Likely, so long as the definition of an Android tablet stays stretchy and flexible: does it need Google's seal of approval? does it need to be upgradeable to subsequent official Android releases? does it just need to have started with Android? There's no solid definition, so we end up trying to compare one product from one company against a spectrum of design and build approaches (and quality levels) and boil it down to a coherent horse race. No wonder the numbers from different tracking points are out of whack.

Due to subsidies, there's a lot more room at the bottom in tablets. You can get an iPhone for $99, if you sign a contract, so to be much "cheaper" than that the difference is a subtle one based on contract terms. If the next nexus is $100 as rumored that puts it into impulse buy territory for most westerners.

I could see it happen, especially if you count things like the Nook and Kindle Touch as Android tablets.

Yes, they may have already done so. Recent reports show Android with 48% of market share WITHOUT counting Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD/Nook Tablet HD sales. I'd say those will easily cover the missing 2%.

Almost certainly, if by "overtake" one means "sells more units" and Android means "is built on a fork of Android". Apple will likely continue to capture the overwhelming share of profit.

I believe these figures were pre-Nexus 7 (and pre Kindle Fire HD line), so all else held equal, I'd imagine these figures are skewed slightly downwards.

The question is too coarse.

In which markets will Android tablets overtake iPads?

In which markets do Android tablets already outsell iPads?

This article has 3 graphs (for mobile phone market) that are very relevant to tablets as well:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-...

Does "crossing the chasm" apply to the tablet market? Massive sales of cheap tablets/phablets in countries where iPad's are grossly unaffordable (price of a Rolex is US equivalent) will generate companies that can eat Apple's pie. It will take years, but it has already happened (Korea and China), and is happening in non-US markets.

Oops correction - Koreans buy iPads (70% to 80% market share in Q2).

Why not? It happened with the I phone, and the PC when it took over the market (although Apple wasn't as dominant back then).

Volume? Almost certainly. Profit? No chance.

Sure. Most responsible lower-middle class or poor families can't afford an iPad, but something in the $99-300 range is doable. This is the trajectory that smart phones went: I see tons of people with Android Crickets.

As others have pointed out, this should have no bearing on Apple's success: I've never met someone who wanted a MacBook Pro who changed their mind because of a $299 laptop at WalMart.

Most responsible lower-middle class or poor families can't afford an iPad

That statement makes no sense. Everyone and their grandma can have an iPad. They are being given away for "free", bundled with 3G subscriptions.

Android tablets you actually have to buy.

Where I live, Android-tablets are mostly found among wealthier, informed people.

No. (as per Betteridge's law)

probably

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