

The Smartphone Wars: Mystery of the Android tablets - srl
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4093

======
nooneelse
Here. That is... I'm someone that bought an android tablet... though I don't
really fit the hypothesis of this piece. I got an Asus Transformer Prime (so
not the low end) at the end of last month and like it a great deal. Being able
to "tear the screen off the laptop I'm using"... I didn't realize I've been
wanting to do that for years now, until I could.

But I guess I could answer the questions posed by the piece nonetheless, who
I, an android tablet buyer, am and what I use it for. I'm an average Ph.D.
student in a technical discipline. So I've only very little disposable income
for fun gadgets, which I can augment a bit when I have a belief that they will
also be useful. Thus why I waited till android tablets got better enough and
went for one designed to work very well with a keyboard.

What I use it for... well, what people I know seem to use their iPads for...
email, light browsing online, and reading books/pdfs offline. Games... well,
I'm hooked on Spirit right now, so maybe I should say playing one game over
and over. :-) Other coffeehouse computing sort of stuff... drawing diagrams
and typing up what I need to on the go. The touch-to-sound delay seems to
preclude good musical instruments, but I've always been more of a drum
machines, synths, and sequencers kind of guy, so I've been playing with those.
I keep meaning to put a python interpreter on here, but that darn dissertation
work and all.

I had kinda hoped to make this my main computing machine. But really, that was
a silly hope given the various stuff I use/want. The full laptop still earns
its place/weight in my backpack. I guess I'm just not a one OS kind of guy,
and heck, no need to be limited to just one anyway, right tool for each job
and all that.

~~~
bane
Have you found any good sequencers synths? I'd love to be able to track on the
go.

~~~
nooneelse
Commandar beat me to it, so far Caustic is top of my heap. I wish all the
knobs were script-able though. For a straight-forward drum machine Electrum
Drum is not bad.

------
coopdog
Even though the ipad is 'easier' for a majority of use cases (well, as easy,
Android is pretty damn user friendly also!), the fact is that Apple outright
disallow anything outside of what they've dreamed up

Yesterday my fiance wanted to watch a film on her ipod and had realised the
process would involve converting files (size and movie type), getting it into
itunes, and the 'syncing' which is a pain. On Android you literally just drag
it across the cable and the thing plays almost any format, or use a torrent
client to get it straight from the web onto your phone

Using voip was a pain for a while. Making mobile AP's. Using apps from other
markets (or your own apps), even just watching flash or adding a bit of
personalisation to the UI

People are realising that Android is actually better, because it's just a
shiny most of the time, but when it's time to do something the designers
haven't thought up it might be slightly more difficult, but it's possible on
Android and probably impossible on iOS

(plus I really think Apple is earning bad rep over those patents lawsuits.
Consumers do understand / appreciate choice, even Apple fanbois, and they view
it as the evil act that it is even if they don't get all riled up over it)

~~~
ralfd
As others said there are enough Apps (like Cinexplayer) who play all kinds of
video formats. And transcoding to MP4/h.264 with iTunes may be a hazzle, but
that will ensure that the file will be played with hardware acceleration.

@Patent lawsuits It is everyone vs everyone. Apple has to pay Nokia a hefty
licensing sum, they are currently sued by Motorola, Microsoft is getting big
money from every company which uses Android, Google sells strategic patents to
other HTC, so they can make for them the dirty stuff. And nevertheless in the
end all will make business together. I am sceptic against people taking sides
in that.

~~~
gurkendoktor
It should also be pointed out that you have to _use_ iTunes to drag MKV files
etc. onto the iPad, but you don't need to add them to iTunes and sync them
from there.

iOS apps can accept and offer file drag&drop and this bypasses the iTunes
library. It's still not as easy as having a folder pop up on the desktop,
though.

------
bane
For what it's worth, I have a 10.1 Tab. I use it to play a couple games that
work better on tablets than on phones, surf the internet in places a laptop is
inconvenient, a couple neat art/drawing programs, read comic books and PDFs,
watch a couple movies, and because of the stunning battery life listen to
google music or streaming radio when I'm in the kitchen cooking.

There's probably half a dozen other uses for it, but those are the majority
cases.

But it's not like there's a huge difference in my use cases from my friends
who have iPads. I just happen to like how Android does it's thing better than
how iOS does it's thing. I feel like I'm using a proper portable computer
rather than an appliance. But I can see how plenty of other people prefer the
appliance.

I also like the price point on apps, between Amazon for daily free apps and
just the regular old Google Market for free apps, I've pretty much not had to
pay for anything on my table (and I don't pirate apps for it either).

------
twelvechairs
This article presents a ridiculous amount of 'evidence' without any sign as to
where it has been drawn from - I dont think this lends it any credibility.

I'm not sure the conclusions are earth shattering either. I dont think that it
comes as a shock to most that people buy tablets mainly for basic web browsing
and social networking, and that they will buy something cheaper if it does
effectively the same thing...

~~~
gurkendoktor
> I dont think that it comes as a shock to most that people buy tablets mainly
> for basic web browsing and social networking

I hate exactly these two activities on my iPad, I type too much on Facebook
and I use the keyboard a lot even when browsing. (cmd+L, tab, cmd+F, ...) - To
me it seems natural that people would read eBooks and play games.

Nothing beats (or would beat) hard data.

------
gurkendoktor
> The mystery is this: Who has been buying the general-purpose Android
> tablets, and for what uses?

The few (German) Android fans I know go download console emulators or are
trying to use their tablets to stream movies from shady websites using Flash.
This makes it completely acceptable to have a terrible tablet app selection
and works fine without ever paying $$$ on the Android market.

I know this is only anecdotal, but Android _is_ clearly better for these
activities. I can only watch some DVDs I ripped myself on my iPad because I
got the VLC app during its short airtime on the App Store. :(

~~~
Apple-Guy
>I can only watch some DVDs I ripped myself on my iPad because I got the VLC
app during its short airtime on the App Store. :(

DVD you rip can be played in the default app on iPad. No need for VLC.

There are plenty of App Store apps that allows AVI, MKV, and even .fla videos.
I use Cinexplayer. Another iOS app was free this week that plays all kinds of
media files.

------
troymc
My local Best Buy used to have the Apple products (iMac, iPod, iPad, etc.) all
by themselves, off to the side. The other tablets were about 40 feet away,
with dozens of models of laptop computers in between.

Now all the tablets are in the same area, with the iPad very near the Asus,
Sony, Samsung and other tablets. I might enter an aisle and have an iPad on my
right and a Samsung Galaxy Tab on my left. Someone might go to Best Buy to buy
an iPad, see something cheaper, and buy that instead?

Anecdotally, I have a friend who works at a Staples and she said that many of
the people who bought a RIM Playbook returned it. I guess that means you
should look at usage numbers, not sales figures.

~~~
trotsky
Does that mean Apple has dropped the requirement that their products require a
set off sales area with certain specs? It's been a very long time since I've
been in a best buy, but Microcenter still has this configuration and I know it
used to be non-negotiable.

------
fharper1961
I'm extremely skeptical about the long term growth of tablets.

Personally, I have an Android 10in (Asus Transformer). After 6 months, I use
it way less than either my laptop or my phone.

If I'm around the house I usually want the laptop. Even watching videos in bed
is better with the laptop because I don't have to hold on to it.

If I'm away from home, or just need to do something quick, 95% of the time
I'll use my phone.

My dream solution is one of the new tablet phones, and it should be arriving
any day now.

------
nl
If you have kids, there is no mystery at all.

The more tablets you have, the more chance you have something charged, ready
and nearby when a kid needs distracting.

------
jay_kyburz
My prediction is that everybody will buy these tablets for their teen kids.
Kind of hard to break. Easy to use. Heaps of free games. Easier to maintain
than a PC. etc etc.

------
po
From the linked Business Week article:

 _Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “Android
captured a record 39 percent share of global tablet shipments in Q4 2011,
rising from 29 percent a year earlier. Global Android tablet shipments tripled
annually to 10.5 million units.”_

And from the article:

 _Somebody is buying them._

No… not necessarily. And that won't stop some analyst from getting on the
megaphone and try to make their case that their predictions are awesome and
coming true. There are a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies in finance so they
are paid to cheer-lead.

Repeat after me: Shipment != Sale

I think this is just the tablet manufacturers stuffing the retail channel.

~~~
gareim
The author addresses that in the article:

"There’s a lot of talk of “channel-stuffing” which ignores a salient fact:
electronics retailers aren’t in business for their health. Carrying inventory
costs money, and non-performing product categories aren’t cut a lot of slack
these days."

And it makes sense. While there is probably some degree of channel stuffing
going on, retail stores are not going to keep buying tablets that aren't
selling at all because they'll just lose money.

~~~
po
I see that in the article and I don't agree that it makes sense. The whole
article is premised on an analyst who reports numbers of 'shipments' (compared
to Apple 'shipments' which are actually sales numbers). The simplest
explanation is channel stuffing so I think he has to come up with a good
explanation why it isn't. He is saying 50% of android is probably nook and/or
kindle and he's trying to find the other 50%...

 _What they can’t do in the absence of actual sell-through is induce the
retailer to dramatically increase his exposure. Android retailers have been
doing that._

Where does he get that from? Couldn't another explanation for the rise in
shipments year-over-year be that more retailers are getting into the game?
These are global numbers and the market is expanding. Retailers don't make
that much margin on iPads so they _really want_ to have some other tablets on
hand to put up next to the iPad.

One datapoint he talks about is the HP touchpad. Last year news reports said
Best Buy took delivery of almost 300,000 units and sold less than 10%. That
counts as 300k units shipped. So right there we have one great example of
channel stuffing going on... and keep in mind that the retail stores aren't
_buying_ the tablets. BestBuy didn't take a bath on that, they push the loss
back onto HP. Why _not_ take shipment of the next 300k duds from HP or
Motorola or wherever? Having inventory is bad for a company, but it's not so
bad if you can charge it back to the manufacturer if it doesn't sell.

I'm just saying I think channel stuffing is the simplest solution to the
missing tablets problem. I'm not going to worry about where the tablets are
going until I see someone quoting the _sales_ figures.

~~~
fpgeek
For that matter, in my opinion, he isn't really talking about the traditional
electronics retail channel anyway. To me, the big "mystery of the Android
tablets is the crappy junk you find on sale at drugstores, Bed, Bath & Beyond
and who knows where else.

I can't think of any reason to buy that junk, but they do keep stocking them
and getting newer models (from fly-by-night companies that would go bankrupt
if they evem thought about channel stuffing), so someone must be buying them.
Is there just an endless supply of people willing and interested in trying out
a $99 piece of junk?

And the junk does keep getting better. There was a time, pre-iPad, when the
baseline was Cupcake or worse. Now it is Froyo or Gingerbread, with ICS on the
horizon...

~~~
po
I'll give you that. I think that is happening a significant amount too. I
would even go so far as to speculate that a small but significant (and a much,
much smaller percentage than Android) number of iPads are bought as a novelty
and don't see much real use. The difference is that Apple makes good margin on
that. From the perspective of a healthy platform, active users, or as an app
developer, that's effectively a non-sale.

