Lower-than-expected Xoom sales prompt Apple iPad competitors to delay tablets - Page 2

In my experience how much the board knows about what is going on varies from company to company. I imagine in Apple they know very little beyond, "we're going to make a phone".

You can in fact patent an idea, whether it is implemented in the code or not. It happens all the time. For example, Google has licensed a mathematical algorithm that Stanford university holds a patent for. You can also copyright both the code and the look of the GUI. Oracle is suing Google for using its copyrighted code.

Apple could also make a case that the Google guy that shall not be named breached his fiduciary duties by leaking Apple secrets to Google. When you are on the Board of a company you have legal duty to act in the best interest of that corporation. The Google guy used his insider information to benefit Google. After the iPhone iOS became public, Google radically altered the operating system to copy Apple. Before it didn't even use a touch screen.

Apple's probably not pursuing it because right now Apple needs Google. If Apple sued Google, Google could possibly pull search, maps, and other software from the iOS platform.

For now, the two companies have to play nice though.

Smart phones are just.... handsets. Consumers trash them almost as often as they trash tennis shoes and t-shirts.

iPhone revolutionized the smartphone market and Android was able to copy it well enough to allow handset makers to sell a lot of phones and take a lion's share of that market.

Tablets are a whole different beast. They are more akin to netbooks, laptops or even full-blown PCs (I think their sales should be classified as PCs).

Companies like Motorola and HTC showed they could compete well in the smartphone handset market - they were already entrenched there!

The PC market is a whole different story. Companies like Apple, HP and (heaven forbid) Microsoft have been in the PC market for decades (I would expect Acer to be able to compete here too). How many desktop or laptop systems have HTC and Motorola sold? They have no credibility in this market and the consumers are no dupes.

Google has been talking about Chrome OS for a long time, but nothing much has really come of that. Honeycomb sounds ok, but Google is not clear about their strategy: Chrome, Honeycomb or none of the above?

"Lower-than-expected Xoom sales prompt Apple iPad competitors to delay tablets"

The only people who "expected" moto xoom sales to be any better than they were are the delusional minds at motorola who actually thought everyone was going to run out and blow $800 on a device that is suppose to be direct competition to a device you can buy for $500 at entry level. And don't get me started on the contract they initially tried to rope you into with Verizon.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Xoom is packed with some exciting features but they certainly don't act like they want it in the hands of the common Joe. After being very excited at the prospect of owning a Xoom; here I sit typing this message with an iPad and that's all because Motorola wasn't willing to be price competitive.

For the other iPad competitors I say this. Fear not, just release hardware with specs similar to the Xoom and don't act like total morons with the pricing and you'll be fine.

Smart phones are just.... handsets. Consumers trash them almost as often as they trash tennis shoes and t-shirts.

iPhone revolutionized the smartphone market and Google was able to copy it well enough to allow handset makers to sell a lot of phones and take a lion's share of that market.

Tablets are a whole different beast. They are more akin to netbooks, laptops or even full-blown PCs (I think their sales should be classified as PCs).

Companies like Motorola and HTC showed they could compete well in the smartphone handset market - they were already entrenched there!

The PC market is a whole different story. Companies like Apple, HP and (heaven forbid) Microsoft have been in the PC market for decades (I would expect Acer to be able to compete here too). How many desktop or laptop systems have HTC and Motorola sold? They have no credibility in this market and the consumers are no dupes.

Google has been talking about Chrome OS for a long time, but nothing much has really come of that. Honeycomb sounds ok, but Google is not clear about their strategy: Chrome, Honeycomb or none of the above?

Exactly!

Well said. To think that many manufacturer's are promulgating an OS that (apparently) only exists as a driver of ad sales. Hmm.

That's a very good point, but I think there's a little more subtlety to it. I don't think consumers actually thrash their phones, but that they think about their economical lifespan in terms of how long their contract lasts, which is usually 2 years. Because the actual cost of the device is amortized over that period, they get the impression phones are 'free' or at least 'very cheap' if they just keep renewing their contract, so after 2 years they basically dump the thing and get a new one.

Tablets are different. First of all you don't actually need to have a contract with them, because most tablets will see much more indoor use than outdoor, so paying a monthly fee for 3G seems wasteful. Because consumers aren't lining up to get these tablets on contract, it's much harder to knock down prices and make consumers view tablets as 'disposable items' with a fixed 2-year economical lifespan. Now, personally, I think most tablets will be replaced within 2 years anyway, so you'd think there is no difference with phones, but I think there is. The human brain has interesting (often irrational) ways to judge value propositions, and I think it's likely that many consumers will buy a tablet with the idea they will use it for a long time. Because they are not already counting on replacing it within a determined, fixed time after purchase, they will research the product more, be prepared to spend a little more for premium quality, etc. It's not a disposable item in their mind, so they will take more time deciding if and what tablet they buy.

With smartphones consumers are much more susceptible to impulse decisions, and much more often get stuck with a device they'll quickly start to hate. Just pay some attention to what friends, colleagues etc. are saying about their phones some time, you'll quickly find out how many people complain and moan about their phone, and how much they are looking forward to replacing it. Now compare that to tablets, how often do you hear someone complain they bought the wrong tablet?

That's my impression at least

I'm not sure if we are in disagreement or just using a different context of the term idea. An algorithm is an actual working tool.

I mean you cannot patent the generic idea of a GUI based phone and literally protect it from anyone else using it. While you can protect a specific GUI implementation.


Google's services are open to anyone. I don't see how it would serve them to block Apple.

I think Apple would have a pretty tough case in trying to sue Google over Android. Most people would perceive it as being petty. Its much better to just compete in the open market and make a better product.

I beg to differ. In my experience, board members need to approve the strategic directions of a company, and entering the cell phone segment is a major deviation from Apple's core strategies - At the time, I don't think there was any hint of what a smart phone would be, sure, Blackberry was doing email, but that was pretty much it. The board members may not know every technical details, but I am sure the vision and strategy were shared and vigorously debated.

This is good news for Apple in both the short to mid-term of course. But also likely good news for two others: HP (already mentioned) and MS (barely mentioned).

Google indeed seems to have approached tablets as mostly larger smart phones with more "screen estate."

HP and MS, conversely, are apparently taking the time to release something resembling finished, thought-through products. Both are going to be part of company systems with deep hooks from phones thru tabs thru desktops. And both companies are to various degrees emulating Apple's basic paradigm.

HP in fact looks to want to break out of the commodity model and become another company which uses an OS and software to market complementary hardware. And even on these boards WebOS gets at least some grudging praise if only because it was designed partly by people associated with early versions of iOS.

Yesterday's forum discussion on the new touch gestures in Lion being later suitable for a touchscreen iMac made me think of HP's new tilt-screen PC which is a suitable prototype for just such a device, in that it's a solution for the ergonomic problem of having to reach out to a vertical screen that Jobs has discussed.

Their big problem is scaling WebOS to be a fully competitive desktop OS (and garnering apps for it) - and it remains to be seen how well their initial dual-OS approach (Win AND WebOS on desktops) will work.

MS also can't match Apple from stem to stern because it lacks the hardware base of Apple and HP - but is trying to exert more control over its licensees than Google's done with Android. They lost time with Windows Phone 7 by pulling the phone group into the Win 8 dev process, but stand to reap eventual gains by having done so, especially with Google's stumbling approach into the tab space. And their 2012 release date no longer seems as hopeless as it once did. (Win 3.0 wasn't released until the Mac had been out for five years, after all.)

Windows 7 is clearly the "least sucky" version of Win to date - and my reading indicates that's because they began emulating Apple's approach to its development by modularizing sections of the code, and only including stable modules in the overall build process instead of trying to sort out system-wide effects of throwing in this function and that as they went along. They've built on that in the Win 8 process by including tab-specific and phone-specific layers from the beginning. And they have been building touch pieces into Win for some years now with their "3 screen" goal (phones, slates, PC's) - which has now become 3 and half screens - since there will be two types of Win 8 tabs - one running full (touch enabled) Win 8 (and thus full Office) on Intel processors and another running the lighter version on the ARM processors which will be powering their Metro-skinned phones as well.

So there will be (nearly? fully?) as much correspondence between Win 8 and their phone/slate OS's as there is between iOS and OS X. Which as we all know is a proven model.

They're also scaling down Office to have some functionality and full compatibility on their ARM hardware and WT8/WP8 - and that will certainly have some value in marketing to businesses. (Though I do expect in time that there will be Office-like offerings on the iPad. MS makes good money on Office for Mac, and they need their apps - or at least their file formats - to be on such a popular platform which is already demonstrating considerable business uptake.)

Of course that's a lot of targets to hit simultaneously for a company famous for slipping release dates and still burdened with huge legacy code issues. But we shall see.

So I'll stop there without going deeper into HP or RIM (which is in at least fairly deep doo-doo and still scrambling with a half-baked release), except to note that besides "closing" access to Android 3.0, Google's hired 1900 people in the last three months, indicating they're realizing they have a bigger job on their hands than they realized when they blithely tried to simply occupy more pixels with bigger widgets when entering the tab space. I've also heard they're also finding out they're not getting as much ad revenue from Android devices as expected, giving them more to re-think.

Bottom line, Apple's iPod-like market share of the tab market is likely to continue for another year or more, but it will eventually find itself, if still the clear leader, in a market with several other serious players in in the mix for the longer run. The "post-PC" era is a reality and everyone else finds themselves in a position of having to bet a considerable portion of their farms on gaining a toehold.

Oh yeah, I agree with that - I'm sure they would have known that Apple were targeting the smartphone segment, and probably the price points and expected margins Apple would be going after.

What I would doubt would be whether they saw any "meat on the bones" so to speak. I've been involved in preparing presentations to boards in the past (never had to actually present!) and the level of detail is specifications etc. without showing much detail of how things would actually work.

Maybe not quite ready for "market", but Apple waits for and builds the market before marketing products, determining how to market to the market they developed in an evolutionary fashion.

Apple is quite remarkable in this regard.

Very true. The Xoom is a very nice piece of hardware but without a proper OS and a slew of apps its not enough. I actually feel bad for Moto because its more Google's fault then theirs.

Don't put out an $800 model when your competitor with tens of thousands of tablet apps has a $500 model.

Don't put out that model with your best advantages--flash, LTE, and SD card support--not working.

A $400 wifi model like ASUS is going to put out would have made the most sense and even then it would not have sold that well with no apps. $350 would have been the price point to go for.

Oh, there are lots of blame to go around, and Google is part of it. Centrally part of it. They themselves are, indirectly, admitting that Honeycomb is not ready by not releasing Honeycomb source code and have admitted they took shortcuts to get it shipped. Reviews of the Xoom and other Honeycomb slates corroborate this with reports of unstable software. Android 3.0 is still in an alpha or beta state and Google let Moto ship it. In fact, they are letting Samsung, LG and Asus ship systems with it. Software is harder to do hardware, and Google basically is doing all of the software.

They could have easily held back and had 3.0 systems ship over the Summer, and have another design cycle and a real QA cycle happen for the software. For some stupid reason, the "OHA" thought that they couldn't let Apple have an iPad 2 sales cycle all to themselves.

I think Apple adds value to the their product in a few more ways -

- iTune - it's just a wonderful place to get both free and paid media.

- Brick and Mortar stores - You know where to take an iDevice to get fixed if something breaks - the Apple stores have an excellent reputation.

- Updates - you know you are likely to get updates and bug fixes for a couple of years - I read an article just today about this not clear if any other device had had regular updates!!

- Investment protection - You know all the Apps most likely will run on the next iDevice!

To me all this adds up to another $100 - $200 value that the other guys need to provide

Yeah fair comment.

Still, I'm told "open" software is the best. I say I've been told that, I've never seen it demonstrated yet.

I said back in January, a full month before that pos hit the streets, that Motorola was going to bring out a rushed and unfinished product... also mentioning that honeycomb wasn't even finished and wouldn't be at a test stage until the week that Moto was bringing the Xoom to market.

The writing was all over the wall. Samsung's pos brought out in December was the harbinger of doom for Android tablets...

Now that's really the big question, isn't it? I don't see Google being perceived as a good partner and how many tablet makers want to be beholden to a 3rd party who may or may not issue periodic updates that you hope will work on your specific hardware? As much as I dislike MS at least MS has been very diligent in issuing patches and updates to its Windows franchise, making it a great partner for hardware manufacturers. Google? I don't think it has a clue how to pump out patches to security breaches or updates and upgrades. What's the incentive? Once you give away a copy to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who's building Android devices, why spend the time? Google's making its money from the ad revenue so as long as Android is on a few million devices, Google's happy.

I hate to sound like a member of a chorus, but it's so true that it's the ecosystem that Apple has created that leaves nothing to chance for the unsuspecting buyer.

Funny you mention that. I read that when Steve jobs saw Android, he was so pissed at Eric, that untill Eric was finally kicked off the board, anything about the iPad was specifically kept from Eric. F'ing theves!!

That would imply Google wasn't trying to hide much from Mr. Jobs either. Apparently it was a two way street.

google did what gates did to steve ,

pretended to be best buddies and then stabbed steve in the back .


eric looks so weak and low class .
a million showers won't wash the stink off.

>>>>>
the IPAD by itself can be copied
but no one yet owns all the side pieces that make the ipad the fastest selling product ever .

when o when will xoom ever get its own itunes or app store to mate with ??


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I have no specialist knowledge of how boards work, never having sat on one, but I have read that one reason Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple board was that he was having to recuse himself so often. That would suggest that he was doing the right thing, at least legally. I don't doubt that there would have been some knowledge gleaned that would have helped Google in their future plans. Schmidt must have known something to have known when to recuse himself. Of course, him recusing himself would tell other board members something too.

Anyway, I don't think it is fair to suggest he did anything illegal or underhand. By all accounts that I have read, he is a decent guy.

He was recusing himself after Apple had already launched the iPhone. So he had knowledge of it before the public did. Steve Jobs being upset once Google launched Android is a clear sign he felt Google learned from Apple and used that knowledge to help build Android.

Schmidt had to recuse himself from any discussion of the iPhone's future road map once Google began the Android project.

I think you make a very fair point. Two related observations. One, companies with resources (like Google does) have lots of ways to obtain intelligence on what competition is up to. Two, if as is alleged, Schmidt is somehow implicated, then someone at Apple -- perhaps SJ himself -- is guilty of very poor judgment in putting him on the board.

Android phones are all but given away, the tablets are not.

I suspect Eric and Steve talked at a more detailed level. Google was to Steve then kind of how Adobe was to him in the early days. Both got greedy and stabbed Apple in the back.

What goes around comes around.

I am pretty sure you are mostly correct but I think it was just as important or maybe even more so that the ecosystem that Apple envisioned to support the iPad was not in place. Without the ecosystem in place to support the iPad, I don't think the iPad would have been accepted much better than the tablets that preceded it.

If you researched this before commenting, I think you will find out pretty quickly that it wasn't so much that Moto didn't want to be competitively priced, The problem for Moto and others was and is that they have a tough time being competitively priced because of Apple's aggressive pricing and volume purchasing power.

In a situation like this, the appearance of integrity is almost more important than the real thing. The whole thing sticks in a lot of peoples' craw, and that's all the proof we need that Schmidt should have left Apple's board sooner.

Just as a thought experiment, suppose the situation was reversedSteve Jobs was on Google's board all the time they were working on preliminary designs for the gPhone. Apple had been working on some chiclet-keyed monstrosity, but then lo and behold, a year after the gPhone launches to enormous acclaim, Apple comes out with a phone that looks an awful lot like a gPhone....

Would people be willing to cut him the same slack they appear to be willing to cut Schmidt? I think to ask the question is to answer it. It would be the crime of the century!

I can't help feeling these are just the normal problems any new product has. It doesn't matter who the manufacturer is, you should always exercise caution before buying a first gen product.

The first iPhone lacked 3G and cut & paste, the iPad released without multitasking, the orginal Android G1 phones were really bad. Yes the Xoom is missing LTE, we are still waiting for a cheap 16GB wifi version, and bug fixes in honeycomb; but as long as these issues get fixed I think they'll be quickly forgotten and then the real competition can begin.

The first iPhone did not have 3G, cut/paste, or multitasking by design. Apple did not promised any of those things. iOS is released as a complete OS that does what Apple says it does. Apple continues to add functionality along the way.

Honeycomb is an incomplete OS that over-promises and under-delivers.

BaZoomga!!!

Their best bet for profit would have been to follow Best Buy and become an Apple Authorized Reseller and resell the iPads. They would have pushed more tablets that way.

And Google will continue to add functionality to Android along the way and 6 to 12 months down the line no one will care the first version was missing functionality. What I am saying this battle is only just beginning, don't dismiss the threat from Android to easily.

It's very interesting how successful Windows laptops are yet how unsuccessful are Windows tablets.

They will, but it misses his point. Apple hasnt made it a habit of making promises and stating soon so many times that youre better off waiting for Godot.

There are some examples, like the white iPhone, FaceTime being released as open, and Resolution Independence in early features of Leopard (or was it Tiger). The difference I see with those items is that they didnt affect a consumers decision prior to purchase. Apple removed RI from their site long before the GM was finalized. I guess you can say some waited for the white iPhone and are now sore but I think thats a pretty weak argument in comparison to their competitions promises of soon.



I guess when you dont make an OS to suit the primary I/O youre gonna run into problems.

Unless the court decides it is best to stop all sales of Android devices until the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit is decided. Then what?

Best first post in a thread for 2011. It's pretty undeniable now what a rip-off job Google did with Android for smartphones.