Your numbers would be a measure of their total shipments. For accounting of market share we have to consider the timeframe, in this case 3 months or 1 year.
The total shipments is the important figure. If I started selling a portable games console this week and outsold the Nintendo 3DS by 2:1, all it means is that the growth is higher at the present time. It doesn't mean that my platform in any way rivals Nintendo's if the number of units I've sold is 100k. Growth doesn't impact software or hardware support, only the size of the user base.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hungover
Suggesting that the yard stick by which one measures technological superiority is unit sales is daft.
I was mainly taking issue with the article saying "Android continues to rule the handset market" based on the current sales share but it's misleading in that it makes people assume that out of the people who own competing smartphones, 25% of them are iOS devices and 50% Android, which is not correct.
I readily acknowledge the Galaxy S2 to be the best Android smartphone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hungover
Comparing samsungs flag ship phone with the sales of apple's high end and budget phones is equally flawed. Comparing it with the sales of ipods is just bizarre.
The iPod sales aren't included in the latter stat, that was just iPhones vs Galaxy S2. You are right in a sense that this includes the 3GS and 4 but apparently the 4S accounts for the vast majority of the last quarter number anyway.
And, are the networks still doing a buy-one-get-one-free for Android phones? If so, some of those figures need adjusting -- some of the people I know who bought Androids at ridiculous prices have now stuff'd them in a drawer and gone back to their non-smartphone-phones. Same with Blackberry users, especially after the worldwide system crashes -- apparently, the BB service is very slow now.
So funny how all you brainwashed fanboys are upset that the MWC, the biggest congress on mobile devices, acknowledges that the Galaxy SII was the best phone of 2011.
That's not true.
A panel of academics, analysts, and journalists made that determination.
And, frankly, I am not impressed with the amount of technical knowledge in ANY of those groups.
Mobile World Congress is by and large an Android-dominated show. Most of the phones shown here run on Android, as do most of the tablets, apps and even some of the laptops. Likewise, most of the people here are in the business of Android. In other words, the clear majority of people at Mobile World Congress owe their paychecks to the Android ecosystem.
The REALLY funny part is that even with that inherent bias, none of them could bring themselves to choose an Android tablet for the award.
The REALLY funny part is that even with that inherent bias, none of them could bring themselves to choose an Android tablet for the award.
A tad unfair. if Apple decide not to have a presence at the largest world trade show, it is hardly reasonable to then slam the show for not having an Apple stand. I would have imagined that there would be many firms there that make accessories or apps for iPhones.
With no Apple it is to be expected that most stands would be Android related. This does not however mean that the show is a platform for Android, after-all it has been running since 1987.
With regard to bias and technical knowledge, whose judgement do you value? Many of those voting probably own both an iPhone and Android.
BTW the iPhone 4 won best phone at the MWC last year... 'nuff said.
And if you can afford to purchase an iPhone, iPad or Mac then I'm pretty sure you can very well afford to buy either a share of Apple stock, or shares in a tech mutual fund that's heavy on AAPL.
A 24 month contract with no initial outlay, costing the equivalent of 4 pints of beer a month will secure you an iPhone.
One share costs £550 (approx 120 pints of beer)
The life time of the contract costs less than one share.
Perhaps English isn't your first language but you didn't me out on anything. I never claimed not implied that he did pull it out his ass unless you want to claim I also implied he used the price of volume, weight or component prices to come to his conclusion. Funny how you failed to note those.
BS BS BS BS BS
This was your statement
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
How did you come to this conclusion? Weight? Volume? Component prices? Ass pulling?
Based on your history of supporting Apple, defending them and suppressing other dissidents from voicing their opinions (or try to), its pretty clear which side of the fence you stand.
Having said that, any reply from you will generally be categorized into the two things mentioned above A) statements to defend apple or statements to suppress dissidents.
The quoted statement that I have posted can be categorized into category .
You challenge the dissident by arguing for a more exact definition of "25% Samsung". This is an appropriate and a correct judgement.
However, your latest reply to my post in claiming you "never claimed not implied that he did pull it out his ass" is a flat lie. The intentions of your post and the wording of it
CLEARLYdemonstrates that you were trying to accuse him/her of generating false statements. All that I did was step in and present evidence to the contrary and that his
statements were not "ass pulling" but rather based on facts. He may not have stated what metrics the 25% were, but you already knew what he was referring to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
But moving along to the graph you posted... since when is iSuppli's comically limited breakdown and pricing of products of any authority?
Show me a better component price comparison break down. Preferably with official links.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Even if we pretend that everything listed is accurate and everything listed are the only things that are cost centers in dealing with products why would you assume that 25.66% are Samsung products. How to do you jump to say that the entirety of the A5 PoP/SoC is Samsung's IP when Apple and others beside Samsung are clearly involved with its design? Apple hires Samsung to put together their PoP/SoC by taking various components and putting them together. They are intermediaries for the A5 chip. They are the Foxconn of SoCs.
Cost to acquire said components goes to no other than Samsung. The development/R&D costs are irrelevant as they are fixed costs and therefore sunk costs. Note that iSuppli's data is strictly acquisition costs (as Apple doesnt have a single factory in its assets) and does not even factor in variable overhead costs allocated to these components.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Why do you conveniently ignore Elpida? Hitachi? Both are companies that involved in Apple's A* SoC and NAND. Did you really think that Samsung was the only vendor Apple uses because they are contracted to manufacture the A5?
Until someone has a better understanding of the extent to which those companies are involved with the development of the SOC or Nand, the data from iSuppli is the best estimate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
PS: Next time try to actually answer my questions about what is being measured and I won't end up looking like such an idiot.
I just did with the graphical post. And dont be so naive as if you dont know what he meant by "25% Samsung" as you yourself have seen the data before.
It's hard for me to believe an Apple proponent like yourself havent come across the component breakdown of the iPhone.
Lastly, to be fair, these third party datas are just estimates. The true cost of the iPhone will never be known unless someone inside Apple spills the beans. However, they are
reasonably good estimates to base other hypothesis on (like profit margin per unit). Regardless of the actual cost percentage to Samsung, its pretty clear that they
play a significant role in the production of the iPhone.
Fandroids never go on Android forums and say "Android needs competition from Apple" or "Samsung need competition from Apple." It's always about how stupid, irrational, cultish or biased Apple users are, worshipping the evil Steve Jobs who bullies everyone and takes credit for their work, living in Apple's "walled gardens" (usually meant in the pejorative) because they are too stupid to root their iPhone and run Ubuntu or whatever.
You'll find plenty of Android fans who believe that Samsung needs competition from other companies (HTC, LG, Lenovo, Huawei, Panasonic, Sony, etc...). Competition is good, especially in an open ecosystem.
Does Android need competition from Apple specifically? No, because improvements in Android come from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc.., who all modify the system in different ways, until Google implements all their features in the next version, moving the entire ecosystem along. But yes, competition is always good - no one company has a monopoly over the Android ecosystem, and no one hardware maker has a monopoly either (since ARM also licenses their chips, you'll never see a monopoly like 'Wintel' in the mobile space).
How can they possibly say that? What are they thinking? Do they hate Apple?
The people I know who have the S II love it as a small tablet but hate it as a phone. I think the line of primary functionality for a phone is being blurred.
The people I know who have the S II love it as a small tablet but hate it as a phone. I think the line of primary functionality for a phone is being blurred.
Do you mean the Galaxy Note rather than the Galaxy SII?
So you're telling me you picked up a phone that you absolutely hated and played with it for an hour? Seems even less likely to me. And what is "the Galaxy"? The S2? The Note? The Nexus? "
You might want to work on your retention. I said which phone it was in my original post, the one you first got all freaked out about. It also seems the above article is about said phone, so it does take a brain surgeon to figure it out.
I understand you have the geek button fetish, which is why you probably shouldn't design a phone.
The Samsung Galaxy II is a fantastic phone, I skipped it for the Note but thier basicly the same phone except for the huge screen on the Note. Performance, screen, call quality, weight, OS, a real filemanger with access to the entire drive, open platform, who can ask for anything more. Plus I really don't see any Apple likeness in either the OS or the body. The OS especially, the only thing that even comes close is maybe the way the icons are displayed but I saw that way before Apples iPhone in my beloved Nokia Comunicator 9500. If anything I'm starting to see a lot of Android in my iPhone like the new notification system.
Look, there two different phones and both are very popular so why all the need to bash the one that you don't like. Can't we all get along? By the way MWC is the largest mobile trade show in the world, it's absolutely huge and makes CES look like a doll convention.
With regard to bias and technical knowledge, whose judgement do you value? Many of those voting probably own both an iPhone and Android.
BTW the iPhone 4 won best phone at the MWC last year... 'nuff said.
Right, 2011 was a big year for Android, the OS has finally caught up with iOS and now with Android 4.03 has defiantly surpassed it in a lot of ways. As long as you have a good phone that runs it of course like the Samsung Galaxy.
I was at MWC this last week and I saw a lot of great phones that will defiantly give Apple a run for their money this year.
Me personally I think my next phone will be from Asus, the Asus Padfone is fricken so awesome. Phone that becomes a tablet then the tablet becomes a notebook with the keyboard dock and all weighs less then 2 lbs. Man that's sexy and as a owner of a Asus Slider I know from experience that it will actually work.
Right, 2011 was a big year for Android, the OS has finally caught up with iOS and now with Android 4.03 has defiantly surpassed it in a lot of ways. As long as you have a good phone that runs it of course like the Samsung Galaxy.
I've been reading since Android was first released how superior it is to iOS (née iPhone OS). Then when a new version of Android comes out it's always "well now it really is better than iOS" yet even with ICS and Chrome on ICS the browser still isn't nearly as smooth as Safari in the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.0 running a 412MHz ARMv6 ARM11 CPU with 256MB RAM. What's the deal with that?
The only thing that seems undeniably true is that Android is better than it was previously but I've seen nothing to indicate that it's caught up or surpassed the UX of iOS, which is the only metric that can be measured when talking about an entire OS).
Quote:
I was at MWC this last week and I saw a lot of great phones that will defiantly give Apple a run for their money this year.
There is a lot of great HW out there. Larger displays, some extra features, yada yada yada, but it's not any one feature in and of itself that make an impact with buyers. The feature has to be intermixed with other features well. Why Apple is succeeding is because of factors that can't be placed on spec sheets. Intangibles, many of which can't be experienced at a tech conference.
Did you use any WinPh devices? If the iPhone wasn't an option I'd definitely go for a WinPh device. The Lumias look and feel great... though there is that battery issue plaguing many of them.
Quote:
[Me personally I think my next phone will be from Asus, the Asus Padfone is fricken so awesome. Phone that becomes a tablet then the tablet becomes a notebook with the keyboard dock and all weighs less then 2 lbs. Man that's sexy and as a owner of a Asus Slider I know from experience that it will actually work.
These devices should get more popular as there performance grows but I don't think that time has come except for some niche buyers.
Overall I think you just get less devices to use. I like having my MBP, iPad and iPhone and wouldn't want to Voltron them together in order to use a notebook. Any word on pricing?
PS: if anyone can do this right it's Apple because they more than anyone can two UIs that work on the same foundation OS. MS could do it with Win8 on tablets but they use a completely different core on their phones.
The price will be between 650 and 700 with the keyboard. That's not bad, I really think these devices are ready. As I stated before I have Asus Slider which has a built in keyboard and I love it. Android 4.03 really is a full featured OS and can be used as a Desktop OS.
There is an app called Linux Installer that installs Debian inside the Android OS and can be used side by side. The performance is really good to, I have a LAMP server, Eclipse runs great, Chromium with the Chrome Store, Gimp and much, much more. Plus Android has the one thing that I can't stand not having on my iPad, a friggen file manager. I really do not want to connect my iPad to my MacBook Air every time I want to delete, move, copy, make a directory, BS.
Going back to the Padfone after using it for more 45 minutes I really can see using it as my every day laptop and phone. The phone is fully integrated into the tablet so phone calls popup and all you have to do is say, "answer". Talk while your still working, uploading files to the caller is also a really neat trick. Having three parts is kind of strange but I think I won't have any problems and when Ubuntu finally releases its Phone version well then this becomes the coolest device ever. When it's in phone mode, ie Android I have access to all my work files then I simply stick it into the tablet part and wham it becomes a full Ubuntu Desktop.
Can Apple make this device better, well the hardware yes no question but after iOS Apple is becoming to much like Microsoft. I want a fully open device to do with what I want. Right now on my Asus I can dual boot into Ubuntu 11.10, my 600 dollar tablet has become a really capable developing machine. I couldn't do that with my iPad I'm stuck using a very closed OS. I do like the apps though, they are very cool and I won't be giving up my iPad anytime soon as I need it for my music composing. Which is bar none the best device I have ever used for that purpose.
In terms of migrating your usage to a best android tablet from a pc environment, if your usage is quite lite and nothing overly fancy, an iPad or an Android tablet should suit you fine. The caveat being that you simply cannot do everything you would do on a computer, on a tablet. Tablets are meant for consumption, not productivity and in this sense, they shine. Their portability for reading and checking email and browsing are excellent. Beyond that, while they can be customized with apps to make them more productivity-efficient, not all consumers will wish to do this. Some people do just want plug and play.
In terms of migrating your usage to a best android tablet from a pc environment, if your usage is quite lite and nothing overly fancy, an iPad or an Android tablet should suit you fine. The caveat being that you simply cannot do everything you would do on a computer, on a tablet. Tablets are meant for consumption, not productivity and in this sense, they shine. Their portability for reading and checking email and browsing are excellent. Beyond that, while they can be customized with apps to make them more productivity-efficient, not all consumers will wish to do this. Some people do just want plug and play.
Yes I agree that the original idea behind the tablet was for media consumption, games and light productivity. However you are now seeing more and more people buying a tablet as there only computer, Apples own sales data shows that. So people are expecting to be able to do most things that a computer can do. I know many friends who though have an extra computer in the house but just don't use them anymore and are now a tablet house hold.
I really believe that Windows 8 will be a successful tablet OS and I hope so much so that it will force Apples hands into adding more features to the iPad that make it more like there laptop brothern. Lets start with completely severing the need for iTunes and a filemanger that can see the entire system directory. Things that a Android tablet user had from day one.
Comments
Your numbers would be a measure of their total shipments. For accounting of market share we have to consider the timeframe, in this case 3 months or 1 year.
The total shipments is the important figure. If I started selling a portable games console this week and outsold the Nintendo 3DS by 2:1, all it means is that the growth is higher at the present time. It doesn't mean that my platform in any way rivals Nintendo's if the number of units I've sold is 100k. Growth doesn't impact software or hardware support, only the size of the user base.
Suggesting that the yard stick by which one measures technological superiority is unit sales is daft.
I was mainly taking issue with the article saying "Android continues to rule the handset market" based on the current sales share but it's misleading in that it makes people assume that out of the people who own competing smartphones, 25% of them are iOS devices and 50% Android, which is not correct.
I readily acknowledge the Galaxy S2 to be the best Android smartphone.
Comparing samsungs flag ship phone with the sales of apple's high end and budget phones is equally flawed. Comparing it with the sales of ipods is just bizarre.
The iPod sales aren't included in the latter stat, that was just iPhones vs Galaxy S2. You are right in a sense that this includes the 3GS and 4 but apparently the 4S accounts for the vast majority of the last quarter number anyway.
And, are the networks still doing a buy-one-get-one-free for Android phones? If so, some of those figures need adjusting -- some of the people I know who bought Androids at ridiculous prices have now stuff'd them in a drawer and gone back to their non-smartphone-phones. Same with Blackberry users, especially after the worldwide system crashes -- apparently, the BB service is very slow now.
So funny how all you brainwashed fanboys are upset that the MWC, the biggest congress on mobile devices, acknowledges that the Galaxy SII was the best phone of 2011.
That's not true.
A panel of academics, analysts, and journalists made that determination.
And, frankly, I am not impressed with the amount of technical knowledge in ANY of those groups.
Oh, and btw, if you want an explanation, try:
http://www.cultofmac.com/149720/forg...ress-mwc-2012/
Mobile World Congress is by and large an Android-dominated show. Most of the phones shown here run on Android, as do most of the tablets, apps and even some of the laptops. Likewise, most of the people here are in the business of Android. In other words, the clear majority of people at Mobile World Congress owe their paychecks to the Android ecosystem.
The REALLY funny part is that even with that inherent bias, none of them could bring themselves to choose an Android tablet for the award.
That's not true.
A panel of academics, analysts, and journalists made that determination.
And, frankly, I am not impressed with the amount of technical knowledge in ANY of those groups.
Oh, and btw, if you want an explanation, try:
http://www.cultofmac.com/149720/forg...ress-mwc-2012/
The REALLY funny part is that even with that inherent bias, none of them could bring themselves to choose an Android tablet for the award.
A tad unfair. if Apple decide not to have a presence at the largest world trade show, it is hardly reasonable to then slam the show for not having an Apple stand. I would have imagined that there would be many firms there that make accessories or apps for iPhones.
With no Apple it is to be expected that most stands would be Android related. This does not however mean that the show is a platform for Android, after-all it has been running since 1987.
With regard to bias and technical knowledge, whose judgement do you value? Many of those voting probably own both an iPhone and Android.
BTW the iPhone 4 won best phone at the MWC last year... 'nuff said.
And if you can afford to purchase an iPhone, iPad or Mac then I'm pretty sure you can very well afford to buy either a share of Apple stock, or shares in a tech mutual fund that's heavy on AAPL.
A 24 month contract with no initial outlay, costing the equivalent of 4 pints of beer a month will secure you an iPhone.
One share costs £550 (approx 120 pints of beer)
The life time of the contract costs less than one share.
Donations gratefully accepted...
first time I ever heard of the MWC so its probably a bought congress like America's.
You think apple bought the ipad2 spot?
Why am I not surprised no one can rebut this?
Perhaps English isn't your first language but you didn't me out on anything. I never claimed not implied that he did pull it out his ass unless you want to claim I also implied he used the price of volume, weight or component prices to come to his conclusion. Funny how you failed to note those.
BS BS BS BS BS
This was your statement
How did you come to this conclusion? Weight? Volume? Component prices? Ass pulling?
Based on your history of supporting Apple, defending them and suppressing other dissidents from voicing their opinions (or try to), its pretty clear which side of the fence you stand.
Having said that, any reply from you will generally be categorized into the two things mentioned above A) statements to defend apple or
The quoted statement that I have posted can be categorized into category
You challenge the dissident by arguing for a more exact definition of "25% Samsung". This is an appropriate and a correct judgement.
However, your latest reply to my post in claiming you "never claimed not implied that he did pull it out his ass" is a flat lie. The intentions of your post and the wording of it
CLEARLYdemonstrates that you were trying to accuse him/her of generating false statements. All that I did was step in and present evidence to the contrary and that his
statements were not "ass pulling" but rather based on facts. He may not have stated what metrics the 25% were, but you already knew what he was referring to.
But moving along to the graph you posted... since when is iSuppli's comically limited breakdown and pricing of products of any authority?
Show me a better component price comparison break down. Preferably with official links.
Even if we pretend that everything listed is accurate and everything listed are the only things that are cost centers in dealing with products why would you assume that 25.66% are Samsung products. How to do you jump to say that the entirety of the A5 PoP/SoC is Samsung's IP when Apple and others beside Samsung are clearly involved with its design? Apple hires Samsung to put together their PoP/SoC by taking various components and putting them together. They are intermediaries for the A5 chip. They are the Foxconn of SoCs.
Cost to acquire said components goes to no other than Samsung. The development/R&D costs are irrelevant as they are fixed costs and therefore sunk costs. Note that iSuppli's data is strictly acquisition costs (as Apple doesnt have a single factory in its assets) and does not even factor in variable overhead costs allocated to these components.
Why do you conveniently ignore Elpida? Hitachi? Both are companies that involved in Apple's A* SoC and NAND. Did you really think that Samsung was the only vendor Apple uses because they are contracted to manufacture the A5?
Until someone has a better understanding of the extent to which those companies are involved with the development of the SOC or Nand, the data from iSuppli is the best estimate.
PS: Next time try to actually answer my questions about what is being measured and I won't end up looking like such an idiot.
I just did with the graphical post. And dont be so naive as if you dont know what he meant by "25% Samsung" as you yourself have seen the data before.
It's hard for me to believe an Apple proponent like yourself havent come across the component breakdown of the iPhone.
Lastly, to be fair, these third party datas are just estimates. The true cost of the iPhone will never be known unless someone inside Apple spills the beans. However, they are
reasonably good estimates to base other hypothesis on (like profit margin per unit). Regardless of the actual cost percentage to Samsung, its pretty clear that they
play a significant role in the production of the iPhone.
Fandroids never go on Android forums and say "Android needs competition from Apple" or "Samsung need competition from Apple." It's always about how stupid, irrational, cultish or biased Apple users are, worshipping the evil Steve Jobs who bullies everyone and takes credit for their work, living in Apple's "walled gardens" (usually meant in the pejorative) because they are too stupid to root their iPhone and run Ubuntu or whatever.
You'll find plenty of Android fans who believe that Samsung needs competition from other companies (HTC, LG, Lenovo, Huawei, Panasonic, Sony, etc...). Competition is good, especially in an open ecosystem.
Does Android need competition from Apple specifically? No, because improvements in Android come from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc.., who all modify the system in different ways, until Google implements all their features in the next version, moving the entire ecosystem along. But yes, competition is always good - no one company has a monopoly over the Android ecosystem, and no one hardware maker has a monopoly either (since ARM also licenses their chips, you'll never see a monopoly like 'Wintel' in the mobile space).
How can they possibly say that? What are they thinking? Do they hate Apple?
The people I know who have the S II love it as a small tablet but hate it as a phone. I think the line of primary functionality for a phone is being blurred.
The people I know who have the S II love it as a small tablet but hate it as a phone. I think the line of primary functionality for a phone is being blurred.
Do you mean the Galaxy Note rather than the Galaxy SII?
So you're telling me you picked up a phone that you absolutely hated and played with it for an hour? Seems even less likely to me. And what is "the Galaxy"? The S2? The Note? The Nexus? "
You might want to work on your retention. I said which phone it was in my original post, the one you first got all freaked out about. It also seems the above article is about said phone, so it does take a brain surgeon to figure it out.
I understand you have the geek button fetish, which is why you probably shouldn't design a phone.
Look, there two different phones and both are very popular so why all the need to bash the one that you don't like. Can't we all get along? By the way MWC is the largest mobile trade show in the world, it's absolutely huge and makes CES look like a doll convention.
With regard to bias and technical knowledge, whose judgement do you value? Many of those voting probably own both an iPhone and Android.
BTW the iPhone 4 won best phone at the MWC last year... 'nuff said.
Right, 2011 was a big year for Android, the OS has finally caught up with iOS and now with Android 4.03 has defiantly surpassed it in a lot of ways. As long as you have a good phone that runs it of course like the Samsung Galaxy.
I was at MWC this last week and I saw a lot of great phones that will defiantly give Apple a run for their money this year.
Me personally I think my next phone will be from Asus, the Asus Padfone is fricken so awesome. Phone that becomes a tablet then the tablet becomes a notebook with the keyboard dock and all weighs less then 2 lbs. Man that's sexy and as a owner of a Asus Slider I know from experience that it will actually work.
What's wrong with having a choice.
Nothing, as long as it's an Apple product. Everything else is just a blatant copy and inferior.
Right, 2011 was a big year for Android, the OS has finally caught up with iOS and now with Android 4.03 has defiantly surpassed it in a lot of ways. As long as you have a good phone that runs it of course like the Samsung Galaxy.
I've been reading since Android was first released how superior it is to iOS (née iPhone OS). Then when a new version of Android comes out it's always "well now it really is better than iOS" yet even with ICS and Chrome on ICS the browser still isn't nearly as smooth as Safari in the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.0 running a 412MHz ARMv6 ARM11 CPU with 256MB RAM. What's the deal with that?
The only thing that seems undeniably true is that Android is better than it was previously but I've seen nothing to indicate that it's caught up or surpassed the UX of iOS, which is the only metric that can be measured when talking about an entire OS).
I was at MWC this last week and I saw a lot of great phones that will defiantly give Apple a run for their money this year.
There is a lot of great HW out there. Larger displays, some extra features, yada yada yada, but it's not any one feature in and of itself that make an impact with buyers. The feature has to be intermixed with other features well. Why Apple is succeeding is because of factors that can't be placed on spec sheets. Intangibles, many of which can't be experienced at a tech conference.
Did you use any WinPh devices? If the iPhone wasn't an option I'd definitely go for a WinPh device. The Lumias look and feel great... though there is that battery issue plaguing many of them.
[Me personally I think my next phone will be from Asus, the Asus Padfone is fricken so awesome. Phone that becomes a tablet then the tablet becomes a notebook with the keyboard dock and all weighs less then 2 lbs. Man that's sexy and as a owner of a Asus Slider I know from experience that it will actually work.
These devices should get more popular as there performance grows but I don't think that time has come except for some niche buyers.Overall I think you just get less devices to use. I like having my MBP, iPad and iPhone and wouldn't want to Voltron them together in order to use a notebook. Any word on pricing?
PS: if anyone can do this right it's Apple because they more than anyone can two UIs that work on the same foundation OS. MS could do it with Win8 on tablets but they use a completely different core on their phones.
There is an app called Linux Installer that installs Debian inside the Android OS and can be used side by side. The performance is really good to, I have a LAMP server, Eclipse runs great, Chromium with the Chrome Store, Gimp and much, much more. Plus Android has the one thing that I can't stand not having on my iPad, a friggen file manager. I really do not want to connect my iPad to my MacBook Air every time I want to delete, move, copy, make a directory, BS.
Going back to the Padfone after using it for more 45 minutes I really can see using it as my every day laptop and phone. The phone is fully integrated into the tablet so phone calls popup and all you have to do is say, "answer". Talk while your still working, uploading files to the caller is also a really neat trick. Having three parts is kind of strange but I think I won't have any problems and when Ubuntu finally releases its Phone version well then this becomes the coolest device ever. When it's in phone mode, ie Android I have access to all my work files then I simply stick it into the tablet part and wham it becomes a full Ubuntu Desktop.
Can Apple make this device better, well the hardware yes no question but after iOS Apple is becoming to much like Microsoft. I want a fully open device to do with what I want. Right now on my Asus I can dual boot into Ubuntu 11.10, my 600 dollar tablet has become a really capable developing machine. I couldn't do that with my iPad I'm stuck using a very closed OS. I do like the apps though, they are very cool and I won't be giving up my iPad anytime soon as I need it for my music composing. Which is bar none the best device I have ever used for that purpose.
In terms of migrating your usage to a best android tablet from a pc environment, if your usage is quite lite and nothing overly fancy, an iPad or an Android tablet should suit you fine. The caveat being that you simply cannot do everything you would do on a computer, on a tablet. Tablets are meant for consumption, not productivity and in this sense, they shine. Their portability for reading and checking email and browsing are excellent. Beyond that, while they can be customized with apps to make them more productivity-efficient, not all consumers will wish to do this. Some people do just want plug and play.
Yes I agree that the original idea behind the tablet was for media consumption, games and light productivity. However you are now seeing more and more people buying a tablet as there only computer, Apples own sales data shows that. So people are expecting to be able to do most things that a computer can do. I know many friends who though have an extra computer in the house but just don't use them anymore and are now a tablet house hold.
I really believe that Windows 8 will be a successful tablet OS and I hope so much so that it will force Apples hands into adding more features to the iPad that make it more like there laptop brothern. Lets start with completely severing the need for iTunes and a filemanger that can see the entire system directory. Things that a Android tablet user had from day one.