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Comment by buster | Hacker News Reader

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 ;)

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> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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