Is Apple losing the tablet wars?

I own a Nexus 7 (2012), which sadly doesn't have HDMI output, otherwise I would happily use it.

I could use it to easily watch movies/shows on my TV, without having to resort to a computer (not everyone has an HTPC behind their TV, and a tablet is way easier to move than a laptop/desktop).

I could just fire up an emulator (emulations on mobile devices is great those days, you can emulate pretty much every console older than the psx), connect a wireless/Bluetooth controller to it, and use it as a nice, portable "retro"-console.

Returning on your article, I totally agree with your last point. Because chocolate ice cream sell better, it doesn't mean that vanilla ice cream is losing the "ice cream war".

Oh how I wish there were more (vocal) Apple users like you. I find the 'war' mentality is usually very strong in the fanboi type, not to say that the anti-Apple specifically pro-open-source group aren't almost as vocal.

The most important thing isn't to belong to a group of users, but to use what you like best. Why should I care what anybody else uses if it suits their needs. Why do so many people think they know what is best for other people to use?

I've used this stance many times when (my brother in particular) gives me a hard-time for having a Windows Phone, or using Ubuntu on my dev machine, etc. etc. But the mocking keeps coming.

I've never used the HDMI on my phone but I have on my tablet. I love being able to load an SD card with movies via my computer, insert the SD card into my tablet and go. Works great on planes and anywhere else that streaming is not possible. And if I am in a location where I can watch something on a larger screen, I can use the HDMI output instead. IMO, it is unfortunate that Apple never embraced the idea of alternative I/O.

But I agree that this doesn't have to be a war with only one winner. In my house, we've both Android and iOS devices. And everybody sees pros/cons of their devices of choice.

HDMI is a great feature, to bad there are many anti-features that are required to be there by regulation as a dependency. It would be a real shame if the telecom players lost any power over their customers, if cell phones became a useful replacement for a desktop.

Maybe we can find a way to retain power over users and let them be productive, while capturing their value. it will be a win-win (we win, and win again).

well, it does matter a lot if like some people here, you're a software developper planning on developping on ios or android. if ios is 10% "market share", it means android is 90%, so you better be learning the subtilities of android sdk and forget about improving your objective c skills. if it's 90% share, it means you can safely tell your customers to start building an ios version of their app first, then maybe later see if they want to invest on an android version.

and finally if it's 50/50, and stays like that for a couple of years, then you should probably invest in some cross-platform development environments.

it's not just marketing, believe me.

Because some people have eyeballs to attract.

Just treat such discussion as a "tell" that someone is much more interested in having people listen to them than in having anything worth saying.

People love things to be a war, even if the "opposing sides" are playing a different game (quality & profit for Apple, market share for Google).

Betteridge's law of headlinesʹ: "Everytime Betteridge's law can be invoked on HN, someone will"

I don't know what source they used for that or if the number is realistic, but even as an anti-Apple Android fanboy I find it pretty easy to believe there is a general truth to the idea that the sold to still-used ratio on Androids is likely much more divergent than it is on iOS.

Historically Android tablets have had support dropped much more quickly than iPads. I'm sure there are lots more Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich based tablets just sitting in a drawer somewhere replaced by shinier newer tablets running Jelly Bean than there are iPads which have a much higher "hand-me-down" or resell value even if the original owners move on to something newer.

Anecdotal:

I know a few people just now considering upgrading from their iPad gen 1, and not a single person who is still using a first gen Android tablet.

Doing a quick look at Google Analytics for a few sites I manage and segmenting the traffic with Google's built in segment for Tablet traffic, I show that about 79% of the tablet traffic comes from iPads.

Didn't the gap also come out of the fact Apple sells direct, and when they say they sold an ipad, they sold an ipad, and when Google, maybe even Samsung, say they sold a device, it is to the end retailer (carriers, bestbuy, and the like)? So they may be moving tons of devices, some significant(?) portion of which are sitting on shelves.

I think usage numbers for one single device need to be paired with ownership/usage of other devices by the same people in order to be more meaningful. A lot of people keep talking about how the PC is dead. But I spend roughly 10hrs a day in front of a laptop (which is still considered a PC, AFAIK). So if I am doing anything online, it is more often than not from my laptop rather than my phone or tablet. There are still many things that I'd prefer to do from my laptop so I am also just as likely to get up and go to the laptop than pull out my phone or reach for the tablet. When the laptop is not available, the tablet will do. It would be interesting to see how many iPad (and other tablet) users don't even have another system to use, thus do everything on it. If I didn't have another system, I would use my tablet more. But I don't need to.

That's similar to the stat that showed people with iPhones used their browsers more than people with Android phones. Apple may be pulling it out of their ass, but its not like there's not a precedent for it.

It was 81% on iPad, 19% on everything else. Not sure which metrics they're considering, though. I assume it is "time spent on devices", but that metric is not very objective, nor easy to measure.

I found that to be one of the more interesting metrics shown - but have to agree with everyone else as to how that is calculated. That said, anecdotally, it seems to jive up with experience, but who knows.

I take any "official" numbers from Apple with a gra...no, the entire shaker of salt.

There's probably enough external data to confirm that the iPad owns the real lion's share though.

I wouldn't describe Microsoft or Nokia's tablets as high-volume, low-margin...

ha.

Did you read my earlier reply? Are you poking fun? ;-)