
The Android tablet problem - Marco Arment - movingahead
http://www.marco.org/2011/06/17/the-android-tablet-problem
======
kenjackson
_What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the
door to make great apps for it?_

Simple. Price. The new Vizio 3.1 tablet is $350. If they can hit $299 by the
holidays, these may well fly.

But the app ecosystem you say? Not important. What?! How can that be? Most
users won't care about apps they don't know about, and most ppl don't know
about iPad apps.

If I can demo the following to you:

1) HD video playback w/ some key apps like Netflix and Hulu

2) Kindle/Nook eReader

3) Music player

4) Web browser

5) Office suite

6) Some games

7) Nice scrolling and responsive UI

8) GMail/Maps

9) The price is $150 cheaper than the iPad.

I'm done. You're sold. The long tail I just don't think matters as much as ppl
in the industry think it does. It's the exact same reason why OS X is viable
now for most ppl despite the fact that the Windows app ecosystem is still much
larger. The web neutralized that difference though. The web isn't quite as
important on mobile devices (surprisingly), but the ecosystem gap isn't as
important as it was in 1990 on the desktop.

The big problem with Honeycomb (Android Tablet) is that Google treats it like
they do everything -- they shipped a beta quality product. They did that with
Android for phones, but its pretty baked now. They did it with Google TV and
with Chrome Books. But with Honeycomb and Google TV (especially) they didn't
update them the way they do the Chrome browser. The problem with Honeycomb up
to this point is that it was crap. It sounds like this is beginning to change.

~~~
technoslut
I don't think it's as simple as price. If that is the case then why did the
iPod become such a dominant device back in the early 2000s when it cost
$400-500? My guess is that there is a limit to where the customer is willing
to pay for a quality product.

Marco seems to go a little overboard but it is legitimate to ask why reviewers
seem to pull their punches with any iPad competitors. Whether it's to create a
storyline of Apple vs whomever or there is a distaste for Apple products,
these reviews aren't helping anyone make a purchasing decision.

~~~
kenjackson
With the iPod there was no competitively sized device for a while. And the
iPod actually did develop an ecosystem that did matter -- HW ecosystem. The
iPod could plug into anything.

In contrast the iPads ecosystem is a lot less important. And the HW/SW
advantage the iPad has is dwindling quickly (the HW advantage is basically
gone -- but it is still better SW, even ecosystem aside).

Also the iPod, with the white headphones, became a fashion statement. That's
why Apple spent so much time on the iPad2 cover. They wanted to create the
same visual fashion statement, but I don't think the iconic look has been
created.

For these reasons I think price will play a major role. Not yet. i still don't
think the core Android platform is good enough. But by the holidays, it might
be.

I will say though that if Android misses the holidays, then Windows will
likely be the one to really take on the iPad and Android on tablets will
probably go the way of Linux on netbooks.

~~~
cageface
I don't think this game is going to be decided in a year. I suspect people
mostly use tablets for web browsing, checking email + Facebook, and watching
the occasional video. None of these applications are particularly "sticky" and
I don't think dominance today is going to guarantee you dominance two years
down the road at all.

------
dannyr
I heard a lot of these arguments before. 3-4 years ago when the early Android
phones came out and being compared to the IPhone.

From the post:

========

Developers will rush to Android tablets once a lot of people are buying
Android tablets. But hardly anyone will buy them if there’s too little
compelling software available.

So there must be a very good reason why someone would choose any given Android
tablet over an iPad, and that reason can’t be the available apps.

This, not how closely a manufacturer can mimic the iPad’s hardware, is what
reviewers should be asking about each new tablet: Why would a significant
number of buyers choose this instead of an iPad?

Or, more generally: What will cause enough people to buy this that developers
will beat down the door to make great apps for it?

========

Replace "Android tablet" with "Android phone" and "IPad" with "IPhone" and
it's almost exactly like what Android naysayers were saying years ago.

~~~
kenjackson
While I disagree with Marco, I think you can't make this comparison.

Android (for phones) came up in a different world. It competed against the
iPhone when the iPhone was on one US carrier and Android went to the other
three. Android on phones had a captive market. That doesn't exist for tablets.

On tablets Android must win marketshare by taking sales from the iPad ... not
by saying, "if you're on Verizon, there is no iPhone".

~~~
dannyr
I agree that there are no carriers involved which makes it different. However,
there are still elements similar to the smartphone that exist.

One is form factor. There will be Android tablets with different sizes, with
dual screen, with slide-out keyboard. This would widen its appeal which would
translate to more sales.

Another is price. Like with the phones, there will be several manufacturers
building Android tablets. With the competition, prices will much more
attractive compared to the IPad.

Also, this would be fully integrated with Google services. This is the main
reason why I picked an Android phone in the first place because I use Gmail,
Google Calendar, etc. The IPad cannot give the same integrated experience.

On a sidenote, I actually wonder how brand affiliation would impact tablet
sales.

I have an Android phone which is why I picked an Android tablet. If this is
true for most people, Android tablets will sell really well since Android's
market share is now bigger than the IPhone's.

------
unattended
The review seems a bit biased. Sure, Apple may have a head start in many
aspects but this is just generalizing and reading between the lines of a
different review with assumptions and speculation peppered throughout. The
Android platform may not be the perfect developer ecosystem when compared to
itunes and iOS apps, but there's plenty of gems and the developers behind them
will eventually crawl onto larger screens when they figure it out and have the
time. There's plenty of applications already in the marketplace for
legitimately getting media onto the device which Marco either overlooked or
dismissed. The Android marketplace even has a movie rental section which isn't
hard to miss either.

The good reason for picking an Android tablet over an iPad? Easy, no stupid
lock-ins.

------
kefs
The only real Android tablet problem is that the Honeycomb emulator
performance blows goats and you _need_ to have a physical device to do any
sort of meaningful development. Google _is_ working on it though, just not
fast enough for us devs. :(

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-
acknowl...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/27/android-team-acknowledges-
honeycomb-emulator-performance-problems-hard-at-work-on-fixes/)

------
tomjen3
>“The Tab is a reasonable choice for people who watch a lot of video, as long
as it’s all pirated, because there’s almost no legal content available.”

Ha, the only thing that proves is that Marco lives in a nationalistic bubble.
Outside the US, there is no video content on the iTunes store. Nothing, not
even a public domain propaganda movie or some old public domain stuff.

Yet the iPad is popular here, as well.

~~~
rlmw
He's also ignoring the existence of youtube, which is an incredibly popular
platform for watching video on. In the UK we have several platforms for
watching on demand TV, which are available in any web browser. The author
clearly hasn't done the most basic research.

------
nextparadigms
I think he underestimates how many Android early adopters are there. I'm sure
there are at least a few million out there who would buy an Android tablet
this year if given the chance for a good looking, high performance an well
priced one.

The Xoom was too expensive. Asus Transformer has been hard to get so far. And
Galaxy Tab may be arriving a little too late because a lot of people are
already expecting Tegra 3 tablets, but I'm sure it will sell quite well, too.

However, I don't think Android tablets will make a big impact until the
_second wave_ starts, late this year - all the Tegra 3 tablets arriving, and
Amazon is launching 2 tablets as well, and they'll push those heavily.

And ultimately, the price will help the most, probably. Once the big name
manufacturers start making "mid-end" tablets under $300, I think marketshare
for Android tablets will quickly rise.

------
darklajid
For me (I don't claim to represent a viable market share though) it's simple
enough:

I have no use for a tablet so far.

I played around with an iPad, and frankly I couldn't care less. Yes, it's nice
and "shiny", my inner gadget collector wants to keep it. But I know that I
wouldn't use it. I want _my_ selection of software available, I want decent
tinkering ability (can I easily create software for this? Can I change things
to suit me, whatever the industry defines as 'best' right now?) and - power. A
smartphone with a larger screen (which is more or less the impression these
things leave on me) is nothing I long for.

I'll wait, look at each new candidate - and see if anyone of them might appeal
here. The iPad, while beautiful, probably never will. Touchpad maybe? But I
doubt that as well.

------
WoundedMarlin
I think the biggest problem that Android (Honeycomb) is having is that Google
totally rebuilt the OS for the tablet. Where as apple did not make many
changes to there iOS and the developers had to make very few changes to their
apps code to make it run on the iPad. Android (Honeycomb) will be fine it is
just taking developers longer to fix the code to run with all the new features
that Honeycomb has to offer.

~~~
cageface
The really good iPad apps have interfaces that were designed _for the iPad_.
Rethinking an interface for a completely different form factor is a lot more
work that twiddling with enough APIs to get your code running. Just ask the
people complaining now about Android phone apps stretched to fit a tablet
screen.

------
Tichy
If device thickness wouldn't matter, people would still be buying iPad 1s.

A lot of devlopers already have Android apps that only need to be ported to
Honeycomb.

I am not going to install 400000 apps on my tablet.

I don't like Apple's lock in and politics.

~~~
estel
You can only infer that if the iPad 2 were released simultaneously with the
iPad 1 and with otherwise identical specs.

The iPad2 is the /next/ product Apple released: of course it will sell more.
Apple are exceptionally good at getting people to buy into their annual
refresh.

~~~
Tichy
But the iPad 1 is cheaper.

~~~
estel
And broadly discontinued.

------
AndrewDucker
I will not be buying an iPad. Or any other tablet that ties me to a single
store (especially one vetted for "decency").

That leaves me, at the moment, with Android if I want a tablet.

------
movingahead
Marco's post makes it clear why traditional review sites don't work for the
normal consumer. On a different level, this post also raises a big question -
how can someone compete with a well established app platform like Apple's ?
Android managed to do it on phones because it was the lone competitor to Apple
in the touch phone segment, but I feel the same success will be tough to
repeat with tablets.

~~~
hboon
Build, license or buy their way into an ecosystem. Apple's current formidable
strength is its ecosystem of content (app+media) and peripheral of hardware
devices (iPhone + iPod touch + iPad + Mac).

Let's make a bold assumption that a Mac counterpart isn't needed. Let's make
it even simpler, we'll just need an iPhone+iPad combination of hardware.

Start with a partnership, say HTC with Amazon. So you can have decent hardware
for a phone and tablet from HTC, along with content (app+media) from Amazon.

Maybe it's hard to forge such a partnership, maybe there's a dozen of reasons
why this isn't possible, maybe HTC like it's current way of business, maybe
Amazon is building it's own hardware, but I know I'd want to do this to win.

When you can't win by yourself, partner with someone else so you can win
together.

~~~
movingahead
Agree, partnerships can help them compete. But, the problem is that whoever
has a good ecosystem is trying to go for the bigger pie. Amazon is building
its own Android ecosystem - has an app store and will most probably come up
with a tablet. HTC has its own movie and music services on its Sense devices.
Even if a partnership happens, I am not sure it will be enough of an
attraction for consumers to leave the iOS platform.

------
drivebyacct2
_cough_

Yup, software is why the iPhone is enjoying so much success and Android is
struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market. The Xoom has been out
for a couple of months, the 10.1 hasn't even been released yet.

Is it possible that we could wait a bit longer and reflect back on Android v.
iOS Tablet-edition (or at the very least the 10.1) rather than espouse these
completely inferred blog posts that only lead to fanboyism and (literally,
seriously) useless conversations.

~~~
nextparadigms
Android is struggling to gain traction in the smartphone market? Since when?
Last I checked it grew from 4% to 30% market share in 12 months.

~~~
drivebyacct2
_sigh_

I know sarcasm is discouraged here. I just have such a hard time resisting it.

