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Android Catching Up In the Tablet Market 191

Posted by Soulskill from the making-a-big-dent dept.
TyFoN writes "Year to year, the iPad market share is down from 94.3 percent to 61.3 percent while Android is up about the same, going from 2.9 percent to 30.1 percent in the same period. 'Some 4.6 million Android-based tablets shipped in this year's second quarter as compared with just around 100,000 in the year-ago quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. ...the tablet OS market as a whole grew a whopping 331 percent in the last year and Apple grew right along with it in terms of unit shipments. Tablet makers shipped 3.5 million in the second quarter of 2010, with Apple easily leading the charge with 3.2 million iPads shipped. The number of units shipped exploded to 15.1 million in this past quarter— Apple was a bit behind the pace of that growth, but still managed to ship an impressive 9.3 million iOS-based tablets. Microsoft, meanwhile, had the third largest share of the global tablet OS market at 4.6 percent, with about 700,000 Windows 7-based tablets shipped in the recent quarter.'"
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Android Catching Up In the Tablet Market More

Android Catching Up In the Tablet Market

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  • Shipping share vs. market share (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:16PM (#36847208)

    The reported numbers are all shipping share [daringfireball.net], not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....

    • This is how Samsung is able to push out such huge numbers for the Galaxy Tab, etc, because they are basically artificially inflating their numbers.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • It may be less, but I doubt it's "dramatically" less.

        Stated "shipping share" is an order of magnitude more than the number sold - read the article, it uses Google's own activation numbers and device counts to arrive at that position.

        Now granted perhaps a lot of Android tablet owners are collecting them for posterity and never removing them from the box. But somehow I do not think that is the case.

        Tablet makers aren't feverishly pushing them out just to lose all their money as they rot on the shelves.

        That c

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

        Three words: Eee Pad Transformer. It would be interesting to see its share of the Android tab market, but you know that with the exception of maybe a few days of delay, shipping share equaled sales share for a few months. It was not until the past few weeks that Transformer backordering and price scalping ended.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dahamma ( 304068 )

        It may be less, but I doubt it's "dramatically" less. Tablet makers aren't feverishly pushing them out just to lose all their money as they rot on the shelves.

        Actually, yes, they are.

        http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/samsung-comes-clean-galaxy-tab-numbers-not-consumer-sales/775 [zdnet.com]

        Apparently the number of Tabs sold to consumers is far less (10-20%?) of those shipped so far (Samsung won't comment on that number, of course, because it's a lot less than they hoped). Compared to the iPad (which is still hard to keep in stock at all) that's pretty dramatic.

        • That article is talking about Samsung's first attempt at a tablet, the Galaxy Tab, which is completely different to the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which apparently has been selling quite well.

      • Don't be too sure. Way back when--and I think it's still true--Apple used an "agency" model. The difference is somewhat subtle.

        As an Apple reseller, you are an agent of Apple. What this means is that you sell stuff for Apple. Apple gets the money from the sale when you sell it. You may have 50 iPads sitting in your warehouse, but those are Apple's iPads. They are not your iPads. This is in contrast to the retail model where you, say, Samsung a wholesale price and then add whatever mark-up the market

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Based on...? His wild speculation on how get a number of android tablets? Is ignornig the shipping is based on demand?

      That was a terrbile article.

      • Re:Shipping share vs. market share (Score:5, Informative)

        by AdmiralXyz ( 1378985 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:29PM (#36847412)
        Did you actually read said terrible article?

        As for Android tablets, Robert Synnott suggested on Twitter a way to approximate actual tablets sold. First, five days ago Google CEO Larry Page announced that Android was in use on 135 million total devices. Second, Google’s Android developer site publishes a regularly-updated breakdown of the Android OS version numbers in active use. For the 14-day period ending July 5, 0.9 percent of Android devices were using Android 3.0 or 3.1 — a.k.a. Honeycomb, the versions of Android specifically for — and only for — tablets.

        Round that up to an even 1 percent to be generous, multiply by 135 million devices, and you get 1.35 million tablets.

        So it looks like Apple has sold, to customers, over 21 times more iPads than all Honeycomb Android tablets combined.

        These are Google's own numbers here suggesting that the iPad is still eating their lunch.

        • Does this include the Nook? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by edremy ( 36408 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:39PM (#36847530) Journal
          IIRC, the Nook doesn't run Honeycomb. My bet is that the vast majority of Android tablets now out there are Nooks, of which only a few have been hacked to be stock Android tablets. The most recent sales figures I can find for the nook imply that 3M were sold as of last March, so the sales of that one tablet dwarf the numbers estimated above
          • Not to mention that many android tablets, the early ones, aren't running Honeycomb either. I have a Viewsonic G Tablet and it's running 2.2 and probably won't be running Honeycomb for a while. One million Honeycomb tablets isn't that bad, since HC didn't come out *that* long ago.

            • Not to mention that many android tablets, the early ones, aren't running Honeycomb either.

              And you are telling us that those abismal failures suddenly started to sell well, many months after they came out?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Svartalf ( 2997 )

            It probably doesn't- because B&N wasn't claiming it to be a tablet but purely an e-reader until they pushed the Froyo based update wherein they officially expanded the abilities on the out-of-box machines. The biggest problem of the tablet sales is that they went with Honeycomb with most of them instead of doing a variant like Cyanogenmod's done for devices like the NC and the G-Tablet. Gingerbread or Froyo could've already mostly handled a tablet without the stuff that they did with Honeycomb- even t

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by robmv ( 855035 )

          And? in my country the big promoted table for one of the biggest Telco, and the one with the best 3G (not perfect 3G only the best in comparison) is selling a tablet running 2.2 and that is the Galaxy Tab, the only Tablet being sold directly here by a telco. So it is ok to ignore 2.2 Tablets just because 3.0 was designed for tablets?

        • Re:Shipping share vs. market share (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @01:30PM (#36848248) Homepage

          Ah...but you're missing out on quite a few things there...

          ~1.35 Million HC Tablets checked in.
          3+ million Nooks.
          How many tablets running Froyo or Gingerbread because the vendors are "iffy" right at the moment with HC and waiting until ICS?

          Quite simply, there's quite a few more Android tablets out there than your estimate. How many? Not sure- trying to find the numbers on those from that third line I gave you. It's a lot- but you can't just go off of Honeycomb activations to see what the space looks like. Not really.

        • These are Google's own numbers here suggesting that the iPad is still eating their lunch.

          Only suggests that if you assume that because all Android Honeycomb devices are tablets, it necessary follows that all Android tablets run Honeycomb. This is, to say the least, not true. The vast majority of Android tablets don't run Honeycomb.

      • Shipping isn't always based on demand especially when talking about initial product offerings. Sometimes they are meeting contractual obligations. The retailers are always taking a gamble on these new products. They could be buying a lot of inventory that won't move. For example the original Zune supply far exceeded demand as retailers bought what they thought they needed for the holiday 2006 season. The problem was that it didn't sell very well and retailers were forced to dramatically cut prices to ge

      • Shipments are done based off expectations, not demand. Restocking is based on demand, but even then you may have large chains receive stock they did not request. Large supply chains have deals in place where should the hardware not sell, they will just return it, so other than space and time, they don't loose much money by accepting to carry products that don't sell.

        If non-iOS tablets were selling so well, manufacturers would be more willing to just state how many they have actually sold and stop avoiding t

    • Just to summarize some of the numbers from the Daring Fireball link for those who don't feel like reading through all of it, John Gruber borrowed Robert Synnott's method, which uses Google's regularly updated statistics on Android OS versions in active use, then applies them to the 135M activations of Android devices that Larry Page mentioned about a week ago on Twitter. According to Google's own statistics, only 0.9% of Android devices are running 3.0 or 3.1, which are tablet-specific. Gruber then works of

      • One thing Gruber and Synnott didn't account for is the difference between sales and use. Since Google's active use numbers only reflect those devices that are still being used, any devices which were sold but have been lying idle would not be counted. So, it's possible that people who buy 2+ devices but only use one may be deflating the 1.35M number.

        Sure. It's also possible that people bought several Android tablets, found them all lacking, and then bought an iPad - clearly Android tablets are outselling iPads.

        • Exactly. I merely wanted to acknowledge that use != sales, but, for the life of me, I can't figure out a positive way to spin that for Android, which is why I said later in the paragraph that it'd be a negative statement on the quality of the Android tablets. I thought about mentioning what you just said, but I felt I was already running a bit long with what I wrote, so I decided to skip that exact point. Plus, it'd just be rubbing salt in the wound. ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by samkass ( 174571 )

      And even then, the exact same survey company said Android had 22% tablet market share in the Christmas quarter [bloomberg.com]. So it went from 2% to 22% from calendar Q2 to Q4 last year, then 22% to 30% from last Q4 to this Q2. Sure looks like even their over-inflated, Android-biased survey shows Android tablets asymptotically approaching about 35% of the market someday. Their growth curve-- and it's the most optimistic one of all the Android tablet research out there-- doesn't look good for Android taking a majority o

    • Let's assume that Gruber's wrong(I have no reason to believe he is; I'm a huge Gruber fanboy and his logic's pretty good).

      This means that 61% of the tablet market is owned by 1 vendor, and between Moto, HTC, B&N, RIM, Samsung, etc. that's at least 5 with the distinct possibility of way more vendors fighting for 39% of market share.

      1 vendor, Apple, owns *atleast* a solid plurality of tablet market share if not an outright majority.

    • Not to mention that some of them are cheap £100 tablets which will get bought, used for about 5 minutes then stuck on ebay when the purchaser realises you get what you pay for.

  • I didn't even know there WAS a Windows 7 tablet. I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago and didn't even see one. Where are they selling these things?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      any x86 tablet. they got their uses, though I don't know if industry etc machines are counted into these statistics, exopc's has been out for a while too. they tend to cost significantly more than discount android tablets though.

      what should be remembered with these analyst stats is that they're just published to drum up visitors and customers to the analyst in question - what they've probably done is have gone through some quarterly results for q2 from each of these companies for some shipped unit figures,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Svartalf ( 2997 )

        Heh... I would want the hardware and not the OS. Make for a decent target for Linux/MeeGo. The OS would just be a waste as it'd never get used. :-D

      • any x86 tablet. they got their uses, though I don't know if industry etc machines are counted into these statistics, exopc's has been out for a while too. they tend to cost significantly more than discount android tablets though.

        First people complain when somebody counts iPads towards "computer" sales, then they turn around and count what Microsoft claims are full PCs as "tablets"?

    • There are lots of them - and have been for good long time. I have one of these [cnet.com], that I got when a local hospital was selling off the old generation of computers and upgrading to these. [motioncomputing.com] These things are freaking amazing - usable in full sunlgiht, nearly indestructible, great battery life (plus hot-swappable batteries), but they do cost $2000+, which is why you never see them, except in hospitals or government contracted job-sites, or on sci-fi tv shows. [tabletpcreview.com]

      Fujitsu [shopfujitsu.com], Acer [cnet.com], HP [hp.com], Dell [dell.com], or Lenovo [trustedreviews.com] all have Windows

    • My daughter has one. It's one of those Asus netbooks with a reversible touch screen where you can turn it around and push it flat and make it into a rather thick, heavy tablet. Comes with Windows 7 Dust Bowl Edition, (or whatever they call the lowest level) which does not have touch support, so the first thing you have to do is upgrade the OS. We upgraded to Windows 7 Pro being the lowest level that's actually useful on a network.

      So, what she's found is that Windows 7 has almost no touch screen support,

      • I'll agree with you on the touch support, it's kind of iffy. But if you get a tablet that also includes an active stylus, then the handwriting recognition works, and the right-click, gestures, and hovering issues go away.

        • Perhaps, (although I am skeptical about improvements in handwriting recognition) but this breaks the tablet paradigm as most commonly practiced, which is finger-oriented. It's like saying you can alleviate the lack of reasonable alternative mouse gestures by including a mouse. Some people would argue that it's no longer a tablet at that point.

          The thing is, Microsoft *has* a cutting edge touch interface in Microsoft Surface. But they insist on continuing to market the product as a studio prop instead of i

    • I think they still call the old bulky laptops with stylus sensitive screens that turn around and weight 20 pounds and spinning hard drives to be "Tablets." After all, they are called TabletPCs.

      For a long time i been thinking we should never have called these touch screen flat devices "tablets". We need a new term to distinguish them from the horrid thing that is a TabletPC. Slate? Pads? Touch Computing? I dont know, something other than Tablet.

  • The vast majority of those tablets (Score:3)

    by Flipao ( 903929 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:18PM (#36847236)
    Are built on cheap hardware and run a version of Android developed for phones, Honeycomb tablets have so far priced themselves out of the market. Here's hoping Google and the manufacturers will pick up on that.

  • I am curious how they got to those numbers; namely, what do they mean by "shipped". Do they mean produced and sent to stores? Or actually sold to customers?

    We know how many iPad's are actually bought by people; but how much of that 30% this analyst is claiming Android has is retail channels filling up but not actually being bought? Where are they getting their numbers?

    I'm not saying there aren't plenty of people who may be interested in some of the latest Android offerings, but a 2:1 ratio of iPad's:Android

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nemyst ( 1383049 )

      Usually "shipped" means "sent to retailers", which doesn't necessarily mean sold. However, it tends to be an accurate enough approximation of units sold, since retailers wouldn't stock up on millions of devices they never would sell. Should that happen, the units shipped would quickly drop to almost nil after the first few months, which isn't the case here.

      Still, I have to agree in that I have never seen anything but iPads around. Then again, I can't seem to glimpse anything but iPods and iPhones either, so

      • Well for an initial product offering, retailers have to guess on the amount they will buy since they don't really know how it will sell. Also they are not likely to get them all at once but over a time period like 20,000 initial with 20,000 a month for the next 4 months to get a 100,000 order. This kind of arrangment helps the manufacturer as it helps with timelines.

      • Many retailers, specially large ones, have the power to return unsold units. Many large chains will even receive stock they never asked for and be forced to return it or try to sell it. Since the return may be a bit of a pain they may give the product a bit of floor space and see if it moves at all before sending it back.

        So "shipped" is only accurate enough if the product is in such high demand that you can't manufacture them fast enough, as is the case with Apple and the iPad.

    • "Shipped" means to stores. Note: this number does not discount stores getting unwanted inventory and returning it. They shipped your Best Buy 100 units and the manager returned them because they were not moving? No matter, those 100 count as "shipped."

  • A silly submission (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) * on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:22PM (#36847314)

    Strategy Analytics is talking about units shipped. Unit shipments aren't the same as actual sales to customers. Microsoft used that same word-twisting when they tried to convince everyone that Vista was doing well. As John Gruber pointed out yesterday [daringfireball.net], what Strategy Analytics is calling market share is actually "shipment share." That's not market share in the way most people think of it. If you go by actual sales, the iPad has sold almost 30 million total, while Android tablets have only sold about 1.35 million.

    I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page. Sales of the iPad have tripled [cnbc.com] since last year, at 9.25 million, and iPhone sales more than doubled. iPad sales have been so successful that retailers reserved inventory space for them at the expense of PCs. PC shipments declined by about 6% [slashdot.org], and the PC industry overall declined by 4.2%. I think that's the biggest untold story of all in this--after decades of growth, the PC is in a downward trend because of the iPad.

    Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be. It can be used to paint a negative picture where there isn't one. It can also be twisted by citing units shipped rather than sold. The iPad is doing better than ever and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. I realize that Slashdot is historically pro-Linux and will present Linux-based products as always "catching up" or being on the cusp of taking over, but there's just no evidence of that happening at this point in time.

    • THe PC is in a downward trend becasue of ALOT of factors, most notaby is the breaking of MS lock in and the slow of its inertia.

      • How can PC be in a downward trend when sales of PCs continue to grow [zacks.com] (yes, even if the growth is less than estimates)? Oh right, it's not.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bonch ( 38532 ) *

          That article you links says "PC shipments in the U.S were also down 4.2%." Both IDC and Gartner reached the same conclusion about the declining PC market.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 0123456 ( 636235 )

            That article you links says "PC shipments in the U.S were also down 4.2%."

            In the US, where pretty much everyone already has a PC.

            BTW, how are these figures calculated? I have five home-built 'PCs' which wouldn't be on any list of PC sales unless they're tracking motherboards.

            • Your PCs are not counted as you bought components and assembled yourself. The numbers they are tracking are built PCs as they have tracked them historically in an apples to apples comparison. I don't know how many consumers build their own systems but I would venture it is a small percentage as the cost savings isn't what it once was.
              • Most people who build a PC dont do it to save money. They do it to get the exact hardware stack and performance they want.
          • As I understand the article on zacks.com, it means that PC shipments were down in the United States but up slightly worldwide: "However, strong upside in PC shipments to Asia, Latin America and Japan offset these declines."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by treeves ( 963993 )

          The second derivative of PCs sold over time is negative?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bonch ( 38532 ) *

        What you wrote doesn't contradict my point. People are choosing tablets because they're easier to use and maintain than PCs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Flipao ( 903929 )
          Before admitting that PC sales are down, people will start to include all kinds of devices in the PC category, like Ballmer did with the iPad [xconomy.com]. PCs tend to be associated with Windows, and investors could get antsy if the holy market share started to dip.

          I thought Jobs summed it up reasonably well here [youtube.com]

    • Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be.

      Well, that's one problem. The other problem is that the tablet market was created out of nowhere by Apple less than 18 months ago, and its only in the last 6 months or so that there has been anything significant in the way of non-vaporware alternatives. So the fact that Android has increased its market share now that there are a number of viable iPad alternatives is definitely one for the department of urso-sylvanian scatology or the journal of papal denominational studies.

      • The other problem is that the tablet market was created out of nowhere by Apple less than 18 months ago

        ...wow, you really are brainwashed.

        • ...wow, you really are brainwashed.

          Well, to be perfectly precise, itsdapead's statement should have been, "The tablet-that-doesn't-totally-suck market was created out of nowhere by Apple less than 18 months ago."

          But most reasonable people knew what he meant.

    • I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page.

      I'm not; You and I were around when Slashdot was more even tempered than it is today. As soon as I saw that "Shipping Share" article I knew it would be on Slashdot.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alta ( 1263 )

        You young whipper snappers. Why I was first on /. we didn't have UIDs. All the stories were about OS/2 and 486s and that's the way we liked it! Now where'd I sit that floppy disk?

    • Sorry, but as always, correlation does not imply causation [wikipedia.org]. I highly doubt that people are buying less computers because of the iPad and highly suspect that it may have something to do with, you know, the economy. Or perhaps they're perfectly happy with the computers they already have (you know, because most people already have computers).

    • I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page.

      Microsoft's record quarter didn't make it to the front page either.

  • The Key (Score:2, Informative)

    by rinoid ( 451982 )

    The key word here is SHIPPED, not sold.

    All "tablets" reported from AAPL's quarterly were SOLD, not merely shipped and waiting to be bought.

    Whatevers though, small point, and many Android tablets will be sold but the fragmentation will not abate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Flipao ( 903929 )
      You sound almost hopeful there. There's fragmentation in iOS devices as well and nobody seems to mind.

      • There's fragmentation in iOS devices as well and nobody seems to mind.

        That's because the fragmentation is small and separates the first generation of iOS hardware from the past two or three generations of hardware. There are advances in hardware that newer iOS versions would used (front facing camera for example, or amount of RAM). Of course this would mean older hardware can't support it. Other than these few differences in hardware, the majority of the apps still run on all versions of iOS.

        Contrast this

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Flipao ( 903929 )

          Contrast this with Android which have fragmentation within the same generation of hardware.

          The main fragmentation issues with Android are due to the carriers' reluctance to allow users to upgrade to newer versions of the OS. A 3.1 tablet or 2.3 phone can run the overwhelmingly vast majority of the apps in the market, with the exception of apps that targetted a specific device (i.e. Xperia Play) or they where the devs took shortcuts with their code (i,e, used fixed values when settings up screen layouts).

  • What "Android" are they talking about? (Score:3)

    by Alzheimers ( 467217 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:52PM (#36847718)

    Considering there are $99 Android 2.1 tablets that you can get in stores like Walgreens or CVS, is it any wonder they're "gaining marketshare"?

    They're on the low end of the spectrum, but they do browse the web and can play Angry Birds.

    • Considering there are $99 Android 2.1 tablets that you can get in stores like Walgreens or CVS, is it any wonder they're "gaining marketshare"?

      They're on the low end of the spectrum, but they do browse the web and can play Angry Birds.

      What does the price of the Android tablets have to do with the number of units sold? If it will make you feel better, I'll sell you the same $99 tablet for $499. As an app developer, the fact that machines are available for a modest sum that can run (and therefore purchase) my apps is a plus, not a negative.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Really? I thought the Nook Color was the cheapest 2.x tablet. If there are seriously $99 color tablets I'll have to pick one up for the kids so they stop bugging the wife and I to use our phones to play Angry Birds.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @12:53PM (#36847734)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • That extra competition will do nothing for Android pricing. Right now Android tablets are already facing full competition pressure from the iPad. Android prices aren't high because makers are ignoring the iPad and only pricing against each other. Android prices are high because Apple is buying components they took options on years ago in lots of ten million. Android makers are buying components based on current availability in lots of hundred thousands or even ten thousands.

    • FWIW I won't buy a single Apple product until they stop trying to sue their competition and sometimes suppliers out of business. Even if their market share is up, it's pretty easy to see the greed at work. Once they get complete dominance that greed will be turned towards reduction in product quality.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by wsxyz ( 543068 )
        You should refrain from purchasing any product whatsoever that is made by a company that is suing one of its competitors.
        • The first suit I can remember was Polaroid vs. Kodak. Everyone remembers the amazing quality of Polaroid cameras, right? How they are a powerful, innovative player in the instant camera market place of the 21st century?

      • Once they get complete dominance that greed will be turned towards reduction in product quality.

        And you're basing that one their history of having done so in the iPod market, right? I mean, they continue to have 70% market share in the music player business, and it's obvious that the product quality has really taken a nose dive in the time that they've been on top. All of these new iPod nano and iPod Touch devices have really set the market back by a number of years, rather than driving the innovation and quality forward.

        Or maybe you're basing it on what they've done with their 90% market share of the

        • Yeah, I have yet to pay a single red cent for an Apple product, so I can't exactly say that I know anything about the quality. I won't buy a smartphone without a keyboard, I hate what they've done to the smartphone market to be honest. I've thought the iPods were outrageously priced to begin with, and wouldn't waste my money on such tripe anyway.

          • Oh, I didn't have an issue with your personal preferences. To be clear, people who don't like Apple products are fine in my book, and I always advocate getting whatever works best for you (for me it's Macs, for others it's not, but it's all cool). All I took issue with were your claims that they'd suddenly start reducing product quality once they achieved market dominance, which is an idea that's not borne out by fact or history. Even if we go with your stance that their products are already "tripe", clearl

            • I would say that Apple went south pretty bad in the late 80's, but it looks like they've learned their lesson there. By tripe I mean their consumer grade stuff. They made more expensive MP3 players than were on the market, packed their higher end iPods with notebook hard drives which were destined for premature failure from people being active while using them. I would have considered buying a Mac until they stopped shipping them with Power processors.

          • I wasn't a fan of the iPod touch either until I tried my son's first generation iPod touch and found that Apple had snuck a unix work station with an innovative interface onto a hand held device. Yes, you can play your music, watch porn, play games etc. You can also ssh into your server and accomplish useful work, the browser is actually useful and standards compliant and thousands (more?) of developers are applying their ingenuity to creating new tools for your use.

            • I have a Droid phone with a keypad. If it doesn't have a keypad, then I can't do anything meaningful for work with it. It's amazing how inexpensive used smart phones are on eBay. The thing that I like least about Apple's direction with portable devices is the absence of a keyboard or keypad. I refuse to use a virtual keypad, I've tried it on friends phones. The fact that I didn't own the devices was the only thing that kept me from flushing them.

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