

With HP tablet dead, who can challenge Apple? - edw519
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44219255/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

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skimbrel
Someone who can turn over design of both hardware and software to a single
team with a clear vision and give that team the authority to make any and all
of the tough decisions required.

So far I haven't seen this from design-by-committee Google or the-enterprise-
doesn't-need-that RIM. WebOS seemed like the closest thing, but it was buggy
and hampered by slow and buggy hardware.

Apple's competitors are right to imitate it, but they imitate the end result
rather than the process that led to that result, and so they end up with a
product lacking a clear vision and goal that can't compete.

That and they always aim at where Apple is now, not where they will be in a
year.

(Disclaimer: this comment written on an iPad.)

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pedalpete
I disagree that the tablets can only be created by someone who has both the
hardware and software capabilities.

Sure Apple has these abilities, but so does RIM and HP, and that didn't lead
to success.

The number two in the market is not an end-to-end solution provider, and
Microsoft (who is not really in the market) has almost 5% share.

I agree with the 'skate to where the puck will be, not where it is' comment,
but I think this market is too young to comment on those sorts of things.
Though tablets are selling very well (ipads in particular), it's like looking
at a two year old and a one year old and saying 'the two year old is talking
and can run around, look at how poorly the one year old can talk, and it can't
balance very well'. But really, but the time they are 4 and 5, the differences
get to be much more minor.

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silkodyssey
Amazon!I think amazon knows what it takes to challenge the iPad. Their success
with the Kindle shows that it can produce a quality hardware product. Also,
the fact that they've said very little about their plans suggests that, unlike
HP they aren't going to release it until it's ready. And when it's ready, just
like with the Kindle, they'll promote it on the front page of their retail
site and provided that it's a good product and it gets good reviews it will
take off.

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dwlathrop
Agree that our Amazon overlords have what it takes to challenge Apple in the
post-PC era. Bezos has always taken price-competition to the bleeding edge of
what can be accomplished. He's willing to lose money on a product to build
marketshare, which is what it will take to compete with Apple.

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jfb
Someone will produce a good product in the next 18 months. It's not rocket
science, and there's an enormous pile of money. But adopting Apple's
integrated model is a) not a sufficient condition and b) very threatening to
existing business models. Apple's monopsonistic position w/r/t componentry is
also going to mean that whoever intends to compete is not going to be able to
do so on price, the traditional domain of the PC competitors.

I'd expect the _best_ competitor to be a hail-mary type of move from a dying
supergiant (Samsung?), and the most successful to be from Amazon.

 _Standard disclaimer_ : former AAPL employee.

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iuguy
There are two main companies in the tablet market: Apple, Google and
Microsoft.

Microsoft isn't in the tablet market, but has a developer network and
enterprise traction the others could only dream of. Having seen Windows Phone
7 and some demos of Windows 8, I have to say that as a tablet OS it'll be a
lot better than WebOS or QNX in terms of user experience, and going out on a
limb would be surprised if it's worse than honeycomb. What will make a massive
difference is the ability to retarget your Windows 8 code for desktop and
tablet without having to do an awful lot of work.

The downside of this is that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Windows 8
tablet apps are ports from desktop apps that don't fully take advantage of the
tablet's capabilities, or address it's drawbacks. However, for things like
games it will be incredible - think about DirectX on a tablet with halfway to
Xbox 360 level GPUs and XBLA ports.

Of course Amazon could compete, fairly or unfairly. To me it makes massive
sense for them to remain focused on Kindle and not pollute their own market
but to bring Kindle's price down to the point where it can be given away with
Prime subscriptions, then go in for a tablet. Having an Amazon table compete
with Kindle doesn't sound like a great idea to me.

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kenjackson
Microsoft.

After spending more and more time with my iPad2 I've discovered the three most
important things it has:

1) Lightweight.

2) Superfast startup.

3) Long battery life.

If PC manufacturers could make a convertible MacBook Air class machine for
$600 that had 7 hour battery life (which is about what the MBA has now) and
could start up as fast as an iPad then I think I probably would never use the
iPad. That said, what I laid out I don't think is particularly easy for PCs
and Windows.

There's the whole app store thing, but I find that I spend most of my time in
email and the web. Some key apps are important, but frankly I think they'll be
on Windows 8 pretty quickly -- especially given it will have an app store with
probably 100M customers within a few weeks.

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r00fus
Before you start making assumption based on your limited exposure... Talk to
friends and colleagues who have an iPad and ask them ... You may be surprised
to find some of them are highly app dependent.

The convertible you're talking about is called the eeepad transformer. Is it
selling well?

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protomyth
I really thought HP was the company. They had engineering, channels, and
logistics. If Microsoft would pull and XBox, they probably have a shot. I just
don't understand their lack of desire to use WP7. Whoever is going to compete
needs a wad of cash and their logistics done well.

The problem is it looks more and more like the tablet market is mirroring the
the iPod market (most people bought iPods but some went for the more
sophisticated competition).

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j_col
Resistance is futile

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j_col
Wow, looks like the Mac fans got me. Resistance really is futile...

