I am very curious to see how the tablet market develops over the next year.
I know a lot of Android partisans are confident that Android based tablets will "take over" soon enough, "just like they did with phones." But the tablet market is different from the phone market in several key ways:
--Most tablets won't be sold with subsidies, so they'll have to compete at their actual retail price. Apple is clearly doing very well here.
--Therefore they won't have cell carriers as a point of distribution, and will have to compete for shelf space at consumer electronic retailers (most of whom do a very poor job of providing the customer of any sense of what the user experience might be like, putting non-functional or poorly maintained models up for display). Again, Apple has a huge advantage in being able to use their own retail stores to show off iPads to their best advantage, not to mention their relatively controlled presentation at Best Buy. Not to mention Target, Walmart, et al. Apple probably has the largest retail exposure of any CE company, at this point.
--More generally, the explosion of Android handsets is pretty easily explainable as a combination of steep subsidies, ubiquity, and the general growth of the smartphone market (which Apple of course created the demand for in the first place). I think it's a mistake to assume that, just because lots and lots of people have gone into the cell store to get a new phone on contract and been steered to an Android device, that there will be any similar mechanism in play for tablets. People aren't going to go to the cell store because they "need" a tablet (only to discover that 90% of what's available is running Android), they're going to go to Best Buy or Walmart or Target because they want a tablet. And in every one of those places there are going to be iPads, at as good or better prices, probably in better working order. And then beyond that all those Apple stores with iPads being shown in the best possible light.
We'll see, of course, but I think Android fans looking for a repeat of the phone ramp-up are going to be disappointed.
Kinda looks like they did figure out Andriods virtual success and went very very aggressive with retail partnerships
Thanks for the clarification. Now that you mentioned Xoom, I am not that convinced that it is really technically superior because it has this and that.
One can place a six-cylinder engine and all sorts of advanced gadgetry on a Hyundai, but it would be still a Hyundai and could not compare to a BMW or Mercedes Benz or even Toyota, at least for now.
I used Hyandai, as an example, because I read that it was technically much improved compared to its forebears in the 1980s, I believe when it was first introduced in the American market. Considering how much South Korean economy and technology have advanced, Americans and Western companies must not think that these Asian companies, technologies and products would remain inferior, forever.
That being said, to go back to the Xoom, it is telling that the Xoom was not able to deliver what Motorola considered be the differentiating factors of Xoom:
Flash software and the mantra, Apple iOS products are inherently inferior because allegedly most websites use Flash, and the iOS products could not. I debunked the fallacy of this argument from Adobe, and from Apple/Steve Jobs haters/detractors (so I would not go into it).
Even if it is true, since the Xoom, as sold, has no functioning flash, then it must not be able to view all those alleged 90% websites -- just like all iOS.
Motorola also was not able to deliver an operational 4G technology for existing Xoom already on sale. So, until it can actually activate the 4G, all existing Xoom buyers do not have anything technology superior to 3G.
High definition screen? What good is a superior screen resolution if you cannot view 90% of the alleged unviewable website without a Flash. It's like having an expensive telescope but you have no view of the sky because all you window views are blocked.
So, what else could it do better than Apple, in terms of website viewing? Superior applications, and games, and others perhaps? Oh wait, the Xoom does not have many Apps, so those poor Xoom buyers even have less to do that those poor iOS who supposedly could not view the alleged 90% websites that could not run properly without Flash. At least the iOS has a selection from supposedly mostly crappy 65K Apps.
So, what is left among the purported features of Xoom that makes it technically superior to iPad2,
Just to reiterate my point in the previous post, and rephrase it, current batches of iPad killers may be unable to compete now, and i doubt that anyone of them could beat the iPad, at least for the period 11 March 2011 to 11 March 2012. If anyone is bold enough to think otherwise, I placed a challenge to anyone who thinks this is not the case.
Having stated so, this current lopsided competition must not be viewed as though everyone else would fold, just like that and cede the market to Apple. We really don't know what will happen in the long run.
As a long time Apple products user, I hope Apple will stay very competitive, if not at the top, as it did with the iPod.
I have a gut instinct that the iPad will do very well last year, I even challenged TechStud on a bet, but he was just a windbag who wavers when money is placed on the table to back one's predictions. I am a pretty sure that no tablet is going to beat the sales of the iPad2 during the period 11 March 2011- 11 March 2012.
Bur, what I would not know, nor attempt to do, is make solid predictions. There are too many variables. The existing production line for the iPad has been strained. From what I read, they are banking on the new manufacturing plants in another city entirely to bolster the production. The bulk of sales of Apple products are being sold outside of the US. I doubt any of those analysts really have that much global research to understand purchasing patterns in other countries.
So, I won't say, below 40 million or higher. But, be a person of honor. Can you please show us a photo of you grounding your device and actually eating it, please, in case Apple does not sell above 40 million. *grins*
CGC
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
You seem to be replying to someone who wrote the exact opposite of what he did, in every particular. Have we entered a quantum entanglement with the Bizarro World, or has the Tholian Web broken down the barrier between realities?
While I wouldn't call myself an Android 'fanboy', I do really like the platform. About a year and a half ago I switched from an iPhone to a droid and haven't looked back. I really like widgets, their notification system, and a few other features that for me are preferable to iOS.
I do have a 1st gen iPad that I use daily, and absolutely love. When the details on the iPad 2 were announced I had a choice to make: bonus money was burning a hole in my pocket, and which tablet would I spend it on: a Motorola Xoom or an iPad 2?
With my appreciation for Android the Xoom had a natural leg up in that it would have the notification system I prefer, and I think widgets on a tablet format would be fantastic. Having more memory would be a big plus, and I am not as worried about the app selection because I've seen the Android market grow by leaps and bounds, and there are tons of great apps out there, many of which should scale well for the Xoom. (This is a case when the "fragmentation" of the Android market can help: more apps are smart about finding out the screen size they're running on to adjust appropriately.)
Having said all that, I'll be getting an iPad 2 this Friday. First of all, as someone who still reads most ebooks on a Kindle, I have an appreciation for thin and light, and the iPad 2 has a definite advantage there.
Second, while I do have faith some good stuff will come out of the Android market eventually, there are just so many amazingly great apps on the iPad I'd be hard pressed to give them up. (I feel much more attached to my various iPad apps then I ever did to any of my iPhone apps, as good as those could be.)
Third, there's price. Enough said on that.
Fourth, seeing things like the Xoom will have Flash support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will have SD card support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will be LTE compatible, but not quite yet and oh by the way when you do want it you'll have to send the tablet away for a week. This screams NOT YET READY to me, and doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. Reading initial reviews has not allayed any fears that it is still going to be rough sailing for the first few months.
So, even though I tend to "lean Android" these days, I'm staying with the iPad for at least one more generation, and am very much looking forward to my new purchase on Friday. It'll be getting LOTS of use.
One key difference here is Apple pretty much created this market, it is able to get out in front like it did with the iPods and leave the competition for dust. The smart phone market is very different, for one it was already there and highly competitive. Also poor experiences and cheep phones were the norm, so Android has been able to flourish in that market in way that will be more difficult in the tablet market.
Let's not forget for example, that Apple is very dependent on Asian (China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea) techno-industrial empire. All it would take is a Chinese who has the vision akin to Steve Jobs, or some other builders of current multi-nationals. Unlike their parents, many Chinese of the elite classs have been educated or lived and traveled extensively in the Western countries. Even Steve Jobs have been influence by Asian culture in terms of his easthetics.
CGC
Thank you for one of the most thought-provoking comments I've ever read on AI.
We better hope not. If they are, then in a couple of years iOS will have less than 10% of the market, and the ecosystem for Android will be like the ecosystem for Windows.
But the tablet market is nothing like the PC market.
Very true. Everybody remembers the piratical antics by which Microsoft took over the desktop market, but there was a prerequisite to that. It never would have happened if IBM hadn't first, through a combination of arrogance and stupidity, inadvertently created an open hardware architecture. There's nothing like that in the tablet market and in my opinion there never will be.
The music player segment is instructive. Apple entered a market with any number of competing products, some of them probably actually ahead of the iPod on specs. The ease of use of the iPod (and the iTunes store) steamrolled them. Even with various tries to unseat their dominance, notably by Microsoft, they still own at least 3/4 of the market. Now look at the tablet market. Yes, I know people have been selling tablet computers for a long time, but it's fair to say that the attempt to create demand for such a product was a total failure. Apple released the iPad and it's selling like hotcakes, and the app store already existed and was a huge success. How could they do worse in this market than they did with music players, where they had worthy and established competition? The game's over before it started.
I am very curious to see how the tablet market develops over the next year.
I know a lot of Android partisans are confident that Android based tablets will "take over" soon enough, "just like they did with phones."
These "partisans" are delusional. Android has taken over the smartphone market? Right. There are more cheap phones running the Android OS. This time around, unlike the Windows "takeover", the raw numbers mean almost nothing.
What % is the cut off point for owning the tablet market?
I would say something like the iPod's hold on portable music player market, and sustain it for several years. Existing competition would drop out because the small revenue and lack of profit couldn't justify continued spending to develope a competitive product, and new comers wouldn't have the engineering knowhow and market recognition to make significant penetration. Then the battle will be over, and market become Apple dominated at both top and middle level, leaving the thin margined bottom level for several small players to fight among each other.
It was Sony's Beta that was FAR better than VHS. That's why people had their money on HD-DVD this past time around. I think Sony won this recent one because they included a Blu-ray player in every new game console that was updated frequently.
Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt though license wise...
which is one of the reason Apple is not including Blu-ray.
another is that Apple and Jobs see that storage media will eventually be replaced by all downloadable content.
If the Motorola Xoom and HP TouchPad are Apple's best competitors then they have nothing to worry about. The Xoom was half-baked and the TouchPad is a carbon copy of the 1st generation iPad. When it arrives in the summer it'll be about a year too late. The Ars Technica review of the Xoom makes me think Android 3.0 was as rushed to the market as the Xoom itself. Maybe the really real competition arrives with the Android 3.1 tablets.
yeah, maybe we all reconvene this time next year for another go at iPad competition....this year seems to be a wash.
I think this is quite possible... the only way to compete with Apple's economies of scale is to buy big. However, if the product is as lackluster as the Xoom (great specs, poor experience)
I somewhat disagree with this. I don?t think the Xoom has great specs, I think they some great specs, but have dropped the ball in so many other spec areas that make the experience bad. Besides no LTE card (which will require the consumer to ship to Moto on their dime and wait 8(?) weeks for it to be returned), a non-functioning SD card, and no Flash, they also use a crappy display panel type, even though the PPI is a little higher than the iPad?s PPI. I think it?s clear Apple didn?t think a tablet would work until they could use an LCD with a great viewing angle, which to them turned out to be IPS. How long would the Xoom last if it had a decent backlight and display panel? At least Asus and others are using IPS panels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sflocal
It's understandable. The competitors only had about 20 years to think about it. Just give them a little more time. It's good for them that the price of copy machines have gone down in price since then!
I'm not sure what 100% means here but if iPad 2 lives up to expectations I could see them moving 5 million a month. Sounds like a lot but world wide it should be very possible. Unfortunately I think sales will be limited by production capacity for months.
I agree with the 50 million iPad 2 production goal in these next 10 months. But I don't see supply ever matching demand all year long. I think if you don't get one this weekend and perhaps even Friday that you will have to be part of a never ending queue for the rest of the year to get one.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
i sense that cgc still has milk on his upper lip and is learning new things in class that are just blowing him away and he's just eager to share his amazing new-found knowledge with us. Also, today's youth, raised on Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow, are kind of irony impaired. Heck, he called out some poster for employing hyperbole by saying "no one will buy Android."
There are a few minor gaps in the iOS platform which Google has exploited (notifications being the elephant in the room). Apple can absolutely kill Android with a nice new iOS release in a month.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
While I wouldn't call myself an Android 'fanboy', I do really like the platform. About a year and a half ago I switched from an iPhone to a droid and haven't looked back. I really like widgets, their notification system, and a few other features that for me are preferable to iOS.
I do have a 1st gen iPad that I use daily, and absolutely love. When the details on the iPad 2 were announced I had a choice to make: bonus money was burning a hole in my pocket, and which tablet would I spend it on: a Motorola Xoom or an iPad 2?
With my appreciation for Android the Xoom had a natural leg up in that it would have the notification system I prefer, and I think widgets on a tablet format would be fantastic. Having more memory would be a big plus, and I am not as worried about the app selection because I've seen the Android market grow by leaps and bounds, and there are tons of great apps out there, many of which should scale well for the Xoom. (This is a case when the "fragmentation" of the Android market can help: more apps are smart about finding out the screen size they're running on to adjust appropriately.)
Having said all that, I'll be getting an iPad 2 this Friday. First of all, as someone who still reads most ebooks on a Kindle, I have an appreciation for thin and light, and the iPad 2 has a definite advantage there.
Second, while I do have faith some good stuff will come out of the Android market eventually, there are just so many amazingly great apps on the iPad I'd be hard pressed to give them up. (I feel much more attached to my various iPad apps then I ever did to any of my iPhone apps, as good as those could be.)
Third, there's price. Enough said on that.
Fourth, seeing things like the Xoom will have Flash support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will have SD card support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will be LTE compatible, but not quite yet and oh by the way when you do want it you'll have to send the tablet away for a week. This screams NOT YET READY to me, and doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. Reading initial reviews has not allayed any fears that it is still going to be rough sailing for the first few months.
So, even though I tend to "lean Android" these days, I'm staying with the iPad for at least one more generation, and am very much looking forward to my new purchase on Friday. It'll be getting LOTS of use.
Welcome back, karmamule! Seriously, though, very thoughtful comments!
You seem to be replying to someone who wrote the exact opposite of what he did, in every particular. Have we entered a quantum entanglement with the Bizarro World, or has the Tholian Web broken down the barrier between realities?
Did you actually read my entire post? *grins* I rhink (s)he did not like that my post was long, and I understand. That said, while I like Apple, and I think Apple/Steve Jobs does not tend to underestimate its competitors, many analysts tend to have very shallow understanding of Asian tenacity. They may lose the round now but they would not simply fold, as the article implies. Many will just find a market to their product.
Quote:
Originally Posted by karmamule
While I wouldn't call myself an Android 'fanboy'...
There's nothing incorrect about liking something. It is when someone likes something so much, it clouds their judgement and hate/reject anything different. I may not like the foundation of Google business philosophy -- seling my personal information -- but that did not prevent me from using some of their technologies of Google that I find very useful.
What I sensed in some of the postings of some is more a dislike/hate of Apple/Steve Jobs, and would tend to embrace "any" that would come along that is not Apple product. That you at least judge products on their merits says something about you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aeolian
It was Sony's Beta that was FAR better than VHS. That's why people had their money on HD-DVD this past time around. I think Sony won this recent one because they included a Blu-ray player in every new game console that was updated frequently.
Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt though license wise...
That was the point, sometimes there are other factors that come into play that decide the fate of technologies. When I read the history of the Apple-Microsoft rivalry, maybe I am biased but I considered Steve Jobs/Apple to be the innovator.
Bill Gates has his own outstanding qualities, but he was more ruthless, and a more cunning businessman. He correctly predicted that it is in licensing the Microsoft software, and used IBM technical expertise to incubate the MIcrosoft OS. but retained exclusive right on the license. It did not do them bad too, to "borrow" some of the scripts of Apple, the only thing was that they got caught.
Enjoyed your comments CGC. I agree, China is position to follow in the footsteps of Japan, Korea, etc.
I remember when "made in Japan" was a sign of low quality. But as you say, it hasn't been that way for a very long time. I also, remember the Korean cars of the 1980's. It was said that if you wanted to make an emergency stop in a Hyundai, all you had to do was turn on the air conditioning. Again, that is no longer the case.
As far as China. I agree it's seems almost inevitable that they will surpass the US as far as manufacturing (this year, I believe) and may have the largest economy (GDP) as soon as 2025. It really should be no surprise, they were the world leader for 13 of the last 18 centuries.
Having said this, the US still has more Nobel prizes awarded and receives more patents than any other country in the world. 18 of the top 20 Universities are in the US. And although China has 1.3 Billion people (and will undoubtedly have more tomorrow), the US with only, 310 million can "draw" and does from the ~7 billion on the planet. It is still true a majority of the world's population would like to get to America.
Comments
I am very curious to see how the tablet market develops over the next year.
I know a lot of Android partisans are confident that Android based tablets will "take over" soon enough, "just like they did with phones." But the tablet market is different from the phone market in several key ways:
--Most tablets won't be sold with subsidies, so they'll have to compete at their actual retail price. Apple is clearly doing very well here.
--Therefore they won't have cell carriers as a point of distribution, and will have to compete for shelf space at consumer electronic retailers (most of whom do a very poor job of providing the customer of any sense of what the user experience might be like, putting non-functional or poorly maintained models up for display). Again, Apple has a huge advantage in being able to use their own retail stores to show off iPads to their best advantage, not to mention their relatively controlled presentation at Best Buy. Not to mention Target, Walmart, et al. Apple probably has the largest retail exposure of any CE company, at this point.
--More generally, the explosion of Android handsets is pretty easily explainable as a combination of steep subsidies, ubiquity, and the general growth of the smartphone market (which Apple of course created the demand for in the first place). I think it's a mistake to assume that, just because lots and lots of people have gone into the cell store to get a new phone on contract and been steered to an Android device, that there will be any similar mechanism in play for tablets. People aren't going to go to the cell store because they "need" a tablet (only to discover that 90% of what's available is running Android), they're going to go to Best Buy or Walmart or Target because they want a tablet. And in every one of those places there are going to be iPads, at as good or better prices, probably in better working order. And then beyond that all those Apple stores with iPads being shown in the best possible light.
We'll see, of course, but I think Android fans looking for a repeat of the phone ramp-up are going to be disappointed.
Kinda looks like they did figure out Andriods virtual success and went very very aggressive with retail partnerships
Thanks for the clarification. Now that you mentioned Xoom, I am not that convinced that it is really technically superior because it has this and that.
One can place a six-cylinder engine and all sorts of advanced gadgetry on a Hyundai, but it would be still a Hyundai and could not compare to a BMW or Mercedes Benz or even Toyota, at least for now.
I used Hyandai, as an example, because I read that it was technically much improved compared to its forebears in the 1980s, I believe when it was first introduced in the American market. Considering how much South Korean economy and technology have advanced, Americans and Western companies must not think that these Asian companies, technologies and products would remain inferior, forever.
That being said, to go back to the Xoom, it is telling that the Xoom was not able to deliver what Motorola considered be the differentiating factors of Xoom:
Flash software and the mantra, Apple iOS products are inherently inferior because allegedly most websites use Flash, and the iOS products could not. I debunked the fallacy of this argument from Adobe, and from Apple/Steve Jobs haters/detractors (so I would not go into it).
Even if it is true, since the Xoom, as sold, has no functioning flash, then it must not be able to view all those alleged 90% websites -- just like all iOS.
Motorola also was not able to deliver an operational 4G technology for existing Xoom already on sale. So, until it can actually activate the 4G, all existing Xoom buyers do not have anything technology superior to 3G.
High definition screen? What good is a superior screen resolution if you cannot view 90% of the alleged unviewable website without a Flash. It's like having an expensive telescope but you have no view of the sky because all you window views are blocked.
So, what else could it do better than Apple, in terms of website viewing? Superior applications, and games, and others perhaps? Oh wait, the Xoom does not have many Apps, so those poor Xoom buyers even have less to do that those poor iOS who supposedly could not view the alleged 90% websites that could not run properly without Flash. At least the iOS has a selection from supposedly mostly crappy 65K Apps.
So, what is left among the purported features of Xoom that makes it technically superior to iPad2,
Just to reiterate my point in the previous post, and rephrase it, current batches of iPad killers may be unable to compete now, and i doubt that anyone of them could beat the iPad, at least for the period 11 March 2011 to 11 March 2012. If anyone is bold enough to think otherwise, I placed a challenge to anyone who thinks this is not the case.
Having stated so, this current lopsided competition must not be viewed as though everyone else would fold, just like that and cede the market to Apple. We really don't know what will happen in the long run.
As a long time Apple products user, I hope Apple will stay very competitive, if not at the top, as it did with the iPod.
I have a gut instinct that the iPad will do very well last year, I even challenged TechStud on a bet, but he was just a windbag who wavers when money is placed on the table to back one's predictions. I am a pretty sure that no tablet is going to beat the sales of the iPad2 during the period 11 March 2011- 11 March 2012.
Bur, what I would not know, nor attempt to do, is make solid predictions. There are too many variables. The existing production line for the iPad has been strained. From what I read, they are banking on the new manufacturing plants in another city entirely to bolster the production. The bulk of sales of Apple products are being sold outside of the US. I doubt any of those analysts really have that much global research to understand purchasing patterns in other countries.
So, I won't say, below 40 million or higher. But, be a person of honor. Can you please show us a photo of you grounding your device and actually eating it, please, in case Apple does not sell above 40 million. *grins*
CGC
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...co=MjEzODE4NzQ
True. The iPad is $399 for 16GB Wi-Fi version
iPad 2, I said.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
You seem to be replying to someone who wrote the exact opposite of what he did, in every particular. Have we entered a quantum entanglement with the Bizarro World, or has the Tholian Web broken down the barrier between realities?
I do have a 1st gen iPad that I use daily, and absolutely love. When the details on the iPad 2 were announced I had a choice to make: bonus money was burning a hole in my pocket, and which tablet would I spend it on: a Motorola Xoom or an iPad 2?
With my appreciation for Android the Xoom had a natural leg up in that it would have the notification system I prefer, and I think widgets on a tablet format would be fantastic. Having more memory would be a big plus, and I am not as worried about the app selection because I've seen the Android market grow by leaps and bounds, and there are tons of great apps out there, many of which should scale well for the Xoom. (This is a case when the "fragmentation" of the Android market can help: more apps are smart about finding out the screen size they're running on to adjust appropriately.)
Having said all that, I'll be getting an iPad 2 this Friday. First of all, as someone who still reads most ebooks on a Kindle, I have an appreciation for thin and light, and the iPad 2 has a definite advantage there.
Second, while I do have faith some good stuff will come out of the Android market eventually, there are just so many amazingly great apps on the iPad I'd be hard pressed to give them up. (I feel much more attached to my various iPad apps then I ever did to any of my iPhone apps, as good as those could be.)
Third, there's price. Enough said on that.
Fourth, seeing things like the Xoom will have Flash support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will have SD card support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will be LTE compatible, but not quite yet and oh by the way when you do want it you'll have to send the tablet away for a week. This screams NOT YET READY to me, and doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. Reading initial reviews has not allayed any fears that it is still going to be rough sailing for the first few months.
So, even though I tend to "lean Android" these days, I'm staying with the iPad for at least one more generation, and am very much looking forward to my new purchase on Friday. It'll be getting LOTS of use.
Let's not forget for example, that Apple is very dependent on Asian (China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea) techno-industrial empire. All it would take is a Chinese who has the vision akin to Steve Jobs, or some other builders of current multi-nationals. Unlike their parents, many Chinese of the elite classs have been educated or lived and traveled extensively in the Western countries. Even Steve Jobs have been influence by Asian culture in terms of his easthetics.
CGC
Thank you for one of the most thought-provoking comments I've ever read on AI.
bob
We better hope not. If they are, then in a couple of years iOS will have less than 10% of the market, and the ecosystem for Android will be like the ecosystem for Windows.
But the tablet market is nothing like the PC market.
Very true. Everybody remembers the piratical antics by which Microsoft took over the desktop market, but there was a prerequisite to that. It never would have happened if IBM hadn't first, through a combination of arrogance and stupidity, inadvertently created an open hardware architecture. There's nothing like that in the tablet market and in my opinion there never will be.
The music player segment is instructive. Apple entered a market with any number of competing products, some of them probably actually ahead of the iPod on specs. The ease of use of the iPod (and the iTunes store) steamrolled them. Even with various tries to unseat their dominance, notably by Microsoft, they still own at least 3/4 of the market. Now look at the tablet market. Yes, I know people have been selling tablet computers for a long time, but it's fair to say that the attempt to create demand for such a product was a total failure. Apple released the iPad and it's selling like hotcakes, and the app store already existed and was a huge success. How could they do worse in this market than they did with music players, where they had worthy and established competition? The game's over before it started.
I am very curious to see how the tablet market develops over the next year.
I know a lot of Android partisans are confident that Android based tablets will "take over" soon enough, "just like they did with phones."
These "partisans" are delusional. Android has taken over the smartphone market? Right. There are more cheap phones running the Android OS. This time around, unlike the Windows "takeover", the raw numbers mean almost nothing.
What % is the cut off point for owning the tablet market?
I would say something like the iPod's hold on portable music player market, and sustain it for several years. Existing competition would drop out because the small revenue and lack of profit couldn't justify continued spending to develope a competitive product, and new comers wouldn't have the engineering knowhow and market recognition to make significant penetration. Then the battle will be over, and market become Apple dominated at both top and middle level, leaving the thin margined bottom level for several small players to fight among each other.
It was Sony's Beta that was FAR better than VHS. That's why people had their money on HD-DVD this past time around. I think Sony won this recent one because they included a Blu-ray player in every new game console that was updated frequently.
Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt though license wise...
which is one of the reason Apple is not including Blu-ray.
another is that Apple and Jobs see that storage media will eventually be replaced by all downloadable content.
Another is iTunes.
If the Motorola Xoom and HP TouchPad are Apple's best competitors then they have nothing to worry about. The Xoom was half-baked and the TouchPad is a carbon copy of the 1st generation iPad. When it arrives in the summer it'll be about a year too late. The Ars Technica review of the Xoom makes me think Android 3.0 was as rushed to the market as the Xoom itself. Maybe the really real competition arrives with the Android 3.1 tablets.
yeah, maybe we all reconvene this time next year for another go at iPad competition....this year seems to be a wash.
I think this is quite possible... the only way to compete with Apple's economies of scale is to buy big. However, if the product is as lackluster as the Xoom (great specs, poor experience)
I somewhat disagree with this. I don?t think the Xoom has great specs, I think they some great specs, but have dropped the ball in so many other spec areas that make the experience bad. Besides no LTE card (which will require the consumer to ship to Moto on their dime and wait 8(?) weeks for it to be returned), a non-functioning SD card, and no Flash, they also use a crappy display panel type, even though the PPI is a little higher than the iPad?s PPI. I think it?s clear Apple didn?t think a tablet would work until they could use an LCD with a great viewing angle, which to them turned out to be IPS. How long would the Xoom last if it had a decent backlight and display panel? At least Asus and others are using IPS panels.
It's understandable. The competitors only had about 20 years to think about it. Just give them a little more time. It's good for them that the price of copy machines have gone down in price since then!
</sarcasm></rolleyes>
I'm not sure what 100% means here but if iPad 2 lives up to expectations I could see them moving 5 million a month. Sounds like a lot but world wide it should be very possible. Unfortunately I think sales will be limited by production capacity for months.
I agree with the 50 million iPad 2 production goal in these next 10 months. But I don't see supply ever matching demand all year long. I think if you don't get one this weekend and perhaps even Friday that you will have to be part of a never ending queue for the rest of the year to get one.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
i sense that cgc still has milk on his upper lip and is learning new things in class that are just blowing him away and he's just eager to share his amazing new-found knowledge with us. Also, today's youth, raised on Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow, are kind of irony impaired. Heck, he called out some poster for employing hyperbole by saying "no one will buy Android."
There are a few minor gaps in the iOS platform which Google has exploited (notifications being the elephant in the room). Apple can absolutely kill Android with a nice new iOS release in a month.
Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud. Knock off the bedroom expert antics and look at reality for 2 minutes. No one cares about Flash, they care about nice products, which the iPad is. I couldn't care less about a single website using Flash and there is not one damn thing that I will ever miss because of it. Neither will anyone else.
3 epic whining paragraphs, is just unbelievable. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and for the love of god, shut up about it! No one cares.
Wow, that's unnecessarily harsh!
While I wouldn't call myself an Android 'fanboy', I do really like the platform. About a year and a half ago I switched from an iPhone to a droid and haven't looked back. I really like widgets, their notification system, and a few other features that for me are preferable to iOS.
I do have a 1st gen iPad that I use daily, and absolutely love. When the details on the iPad 2 were announced I had a choice to make: bonus money was burning a hole in my pocket, and which tablet would I spend it on: a Motorola Xoom or an iPad 2?
With my appreciation for Android the Xoom had a natural leg up in that it would have the notification system I prefer, and I think widgets on a tablet format would be fantastic. Having more memory would be a big plus, and I am not as worried about the app selection because I've seen the Android market grow by leaps and bounds, and there are tons of great apps out there, many of which should scale well for the Xoom. (This is a case when the "fragmentation" of the Android market can help: more apps are smart about finding out the screen size they're running on to adjust appropriately.)
Having said all that, I'll be getting an iPad 2 this Friday. First of all, as someone who still reads most ebooks on a Kindle, I have an appreciation for thin and light, and the iPad 2 has a definite advantage there.
Second, while I do have faith some good stuff will come out of the Android market eventually, there are just so many amazingly great apps on the iPad I'd be hard pressed to give them up. (I feel much more attached to my various iPad apps then I ever did to any of my iPhone apps, as good as those could be.)
Third, there's price. Enough said on that.
Fourth, seeing things like the Xoom will have Flash support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will have SD card support, but not quite yet; the Xoom will be LTE compatible, but not quite yet and oh by the way when you do want it you'll have to send the tablet away for a week. This screams NOT YET READY to me, and doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. Reading initial reviews has not allayed any fears that it is still going to be rough sailing for the first few months.
So, even though I tend to "lean Android" these days, I'm staying with the iPad for at least one more generation, and am very much looking forward to my new purchase on Friday. It'll be getting LOTS of use.
Welcome back, karmamule!
Best
You seem to be replying to someone who wrote the exact opposite of what he did, in every particular. Have we entered a quantum entanglement with the Bizarro World, or has the Tholian Web broken down the barrier between realities?
Did you actually read my entire post? *grins* I rhink (s)he did not like that my post was long, and I understand. That said, while I like Apple, and I think Apple/Steve Jobs does not tend to underestimate its competitors, many analysts tend to have very shallow understanding of Asian tenacity. They may lose the round now but they would not simply fold, as the article implies. Many will just find a market to their product.
While I wouldn't call myself an Android 'fanboy'...
There's nothing incorrect about liking something. It is when someone likes something so much, it clouds their judgement and hate/reject anything different. I may not like the foundation of Google business philosophy -- seling my personal information -- but that did not prevent me from using some of their technologies of Google that I find very useful.
What I sensed in some of the postings of some is more a dislike/hate of Apple/Steve Jobs, and would tend to embrace "any" that would come along that is not Apple product. That you at least judge products on their merits says something about you.
It was Sony's Beta that was FAR better than VHS. That's why people had their money on HD-DVD this past time around. I think Sony won this recent one because they included a Blu-ray player in every new game console that was updated frequently.
Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt though license wise...
That was the point, sometimes there are other factors that come into play that decide the fate of technologies. When I read the history of the Apple-Microsoft rivalry, maybe I am biased but I considered Steve Jobs/Apple to be the innovator.
Bill Gates has his own outstanding qualities, but he was more ruthless, and a more cunning businessman. He correctly predicted that it is in licensing the Microsoft software, and used IBM technical expertise to incubate the MIcrosoft OS. but retained exclusive right on the license. It did not do them bad too, to "borrow" some of the scripts of Apple, the only thing was that they got caught.
CGC
I remember when "made in Japan" was a sign of low quality. But as you say, it hasn't been that way for a very long time. I also, remember the Korean cars of the 1980's. It was said that if you wanted to make an emergency stop in a Hyundai, all you had to do was turn on the air conditioning. Again, that is no longer the case.
As far as China. I agree it's seems almost inevitable that they will surpass the US as far as manufacturing (this year, I believe) and may have the largest economy (GDP) as soon as 2025. It really should be no surprise, they were the world leader for 13 of the last 18 centuries.
Having said this, the US still has more Nobel prizes awarded and receives more patents than any other country in the world. 18 of the top 20 Universities are in the US. And although China has 1.3 Billion people (and will undoubtedly have more tomorrow), the US with only, 310 million can "draw" and does from the ~7 billion on the planet. It is still true a majority of the world's population would like to get to America.
Best