What HP's TouchPad Fire Sale Teaches iPad Rivals 312
Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Williams writes that the success of HP's fire sale in unloading hundreds of thousands of TouchPads at heavily discounted prices may provide clues to other Apple competitors hoping to loosen the iPad's stranglehold on the tablet computing market. The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same price point as the iPad but, put together with all the other Android tablets, it's estimated the iPad outsells them eight to one so 'the problem becomes circular: the user base is too small for app developers to invest in,' writes Williams, 'so users buy an iPad because there are more apps and the user base gets even smaller relative to Apple's.' According to Williams, Android tablet makers must find a way of breaking the cycle to avoid the TouchPad's fate. 'No doubt acutely aware of this is Amazon, which is rumored to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn,' writes Williams, adding that Amazon must price their 'iPad killer' at break-even or a loss to succeed. 'Its online retail empire and the Kindle brand mean Amazon has the marketing clout to take on the iPad, but on the evidence of HP's successful TouchPad sell off, the question is whether it has the courage to put its money on the line. '"
$100 is an impulse buy, $500 is not (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they really need an in-depth analysis for something that bloody simple?
Yeah sure, you can beat the iPad if you offer similar features and sell it for $100--no shit. How is that in ANY way analogous too offering your pad for $50-$100 cheaper than an iPad? Oooh, let's all run out an buy the Amazon maxiPad because it's $650 instead of the iPad's $700!! Unless you're prepared to absolutely bleed money on every maxiPad sale, you're not going to soak up even a single percentage point of the iPad's market dominance.
Re:$100 is an impulse buy, $500 is not (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely. There is no tablet in the world worth over $200. That even includes the asus transformer 32GB with the dock. These devices are just not worth it - limited functionality for a premium? Of course it's not selling.
Apple sells millions of tablets for $500+ (Score:2)
It clearly is worth it for millions of people; so that's not the reason that the HP tablet failed.
Re:Apple sells millions of iPads for $500+ (Score:2)
Fixed that for you.
The customers for iPad don't know about or care about tablets (even if some vendors are deluded into thinking they are the same thing because the specs are comparable).
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Absolutely. There is no tablet in the world worth over $200. That even includes the asus transformer 32GB with the dock. These devices are just not worth it - limited functionality for a premium? Of course it's not selling.
I agree. Given even Apple's numbers, tablets aren't the revolution they've been made out to be. We've seen tons of tablets from various manufactures, some are both cheaper and better than Apples offering, yet they're not really selling in great quantity.
I couldn't agree more.
I expect one of two things to happen to the tablet market: 1) Prices will stabilize at around $200 for the high-end models $150 for the average, $75 on the low end and they'll become a common household item. 2) In a few years we'll h
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Isn't that what they do with video game systems? Sell the unit at either cost, or a loss, and make up for it by a percentage of the games sold.. (or apps bought)
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I agree. I loved playing with the iPad in the Apple Store...but I just can't pony up $500+ for it. Not when I could get a decent to good laptop for that price.
Maybe the ipad makes more sense if you don't have a laptop or have some reason to not carry one around...
Re:$100 is an impulse buy, $500 is not (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually my iPad *is* my reason for not carrying my laptop around.
Re:$100 is an impulse buy, $500 is not (Score:4, Insightful)
I've has my Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a couple of months. Before that I had a Nook Color that I rooted. I started with the NC because I wasn't sure if I would have a use for a tablet, and the NC was half the price of the Tab.
There's no doubt these are primarily consumption devices; although they can be used for creation, that's not their strength and the more creative work you do on them the less fun it gets. What surprised me was just how much of my ordinary computer use was consumptive, and that now it's easier to squeeze in a bit of consumption here and there without resorting to a full computer. Instant on, super-long battery life, and an OS that's simplified make a huge difference.
As much as I was surprised how much I now do on my Tab (so much so that my regular computer gets dusty), imagine what it's like for people that really do want a computer "appliance". Apple created an entire market of consumers out of people who previously weren't consumers: people who didn't want the hassle of [another] computer. This is part of the magic of the iPad, and why nearly 30 million have been sold. The TouchPad's demise doesn't tell us much about the tablet market overall except that the TouchPad wasn't what people wanted compared to an iPad. Android has similar market-share (and mind-share) problems, only differing in degree.
Google should be throwing money at devs to write Android tablet apps if they want to catch up to Apple, our even just stay in the game. Otherwise they risk being marginalized, and if that happens on the tablet side it may leak over to the phone side.
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Problem is, that good $500 laptop may be made by HP, and they are going to stop making laptops!
The ultra-cheap laptop is something we gotten used to, but truth be told: most of these are made like throw away toys and sold at extremely low profit margins hoping to sell so high volumes that it is worth your time. The introduction of the iPad has made too many stop buying laptops, enough to mess up with the low-profit-margin models and to force HP out of the race.
HP's exit MAY leave room for other companies to
The in-depth analysis (Score:2)
No, they don't need an in-depth analysis for that, duh.
What they do need an in-depth analysis for is mainly answering two questions:
1) Is there a way to make enough money off of other stuff to use the hardware as a loss-leader, and if so, how much of a loss-leader can they afford? In Amazon's case, perhaps they can afford to sell the hardware at a substantial discount--yes, perhaps even $99--if, for example, they have an iTunes-like store in which they can make gobs of money to cover the cost of manufactur
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I don't think a loss-leader hardware platform is going to work at this point, unless it's so cheap it's practically free ( $50), or the supplied software is absolutely fantastic and locked to the hardware.
I don't think the touchpads would have flown off the shelves as fast if they couldn't have other software loaded on them. With no support from HP, no one is going to buy something with no support, no upgrades, no bug fixes, unless they're pretty confident they can put something else on it fairly easily.
Gi
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I don't think such a system would sell well at all, especially outside of the geek market. One of the reasons a lot of people like tablets is that they take a lot of the hard work out of computers. Need a new app? Go to the store, select and buy it, and the system takes care of the rest. No installing needed on your part. Same thing with OS updates. In most cases, they're either OTA or just need to be plugged into the computer. You don't actually have to do it.
Compare it to if your idea takes off: Now the u
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I think you missed the point. The key is breaking into the market in a big enough way to be seen as a viable alternative. If HP had planned the popularity of the Touchpad, just to get the public using WebOS, it would be seen as a brilliant move since many people who have tried the Touchpad have been surprised at how much they enjoy using it. Picture if HP decided to stay in the device business after this "fire sale", and in another six months released a new and better version. For $300 or $350, p
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Other companies price their tables "competitively" because they're playing Apple's high-priced game. There's an automatic association of a high-priced item with class and luxury. They're afraid that by pricing too low, it's going to cost their brand association with luxury goods, when in fact, they don't and probably will never have the brand association with luxury goods in the first place.
What they don't understand is that nobody is better at being Apple than Apple. If they want to win, they need to start
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What am I missing?
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Unless you're prepared to absolutely bleed money on every maxiPad sale, you're not going to soak up even a single percentage point of the iPad's market dominance.
Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 Tablet - Black 16GB, Android 3.0 OS, 10.1" LED Touchscreen, 1280x800, 9.5 Hours - MPN: TF101A1 See Product Details $386.00 - $449.00
http://electronics.pricegrabber.com/tablets-e-readers/Asus-Eee-Pad-Transformer-TF101-Black/m873405665.html [pricegrabber.com]
The Transformer is the strongest selling Android tablet by a reasonable margin, and Asus has set a goal of shipping 4-4.5 million tablets in the second half of the year, based on reported contract orders.
iPad 2 sales figures are in thi
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I saw around three of them being used as E-readers on my last flight.
The actual E-readers outnumbered the tablets though.
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Every single day. On the long trainride to/from work, in the can, as a quick and dirty hotspot when needed, as a backup for my home internet when the cable goes down, as a halfway decent game platform, watching netflix (until 3.1 broke it...mutter...) to IM back and forth with the wife and kids, handy camera, general internet browsing, reading mail, and reading books and magazines with Kindle and Nook software etc.etc.
It is a form factor that (unlike a laptop) is actually viable to haul around wit
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So I have to ask, does anyone actually use tablets?
Nope, no one. Not a single person.
All the sales numbers are fake, and the devices don't actually exist outside of demo units.
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So I have to ask, does anyone actually use tablets?
Nope, no one. Not a single person. All the sales numbers are fake, and the devices don't actually exist outside of demo units.
There are lots being sold and they look cool but based on my anecdotal experiences, users tend to spend their time "zooming in and out", "flicking", looking through their apps and then.... angry birds... to me, that does not qualify as "using".
I'm willing to assume that it may still be a new toy for them but the "cool" look rapidly evapourates and makes me appreciate the power and versatility of my notebook.
I guess the important thing is they're happy and I suspect I am at least equally annoying to them
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Except for the fact that at least one study [businessinsider.com] has shown users actually spend more time using their tablet the longer they have it.
I own one; I use it as: an e-reader (kindle, ibooks, and unsecured epubs downloaded from third parties), general web browser, occasional netflix device when traveling & wifi supports it, email (reading, and sending for "lightweight" personal emails), portable "stereo" when traveling - with a small set of external speakers, does quite well at playing some music to listen to wh
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See them all the time on the NYC subway. A lot of them play Angry Birds, some read articles, some do crossword puzzles. I've seen some reading articles with embedded video, which was kinda neat, but if I had one, I know that I'd just play games and watch videos on it, instead of reading anything.
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I would hope he means that super high quality video isn't a requirement. Being able to watch 1080i is a nice to have, but watching 320p on those resolutions is really good enough.
-Rick
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A device that can't play your original files is a bother. Whatever is a bother for a geek, may be pretty impossible for a mundane consumer.
Anything that's a video player should "just work" for a wide range of media files.
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Google just blew 12 Billion on Android. So clearly the motivation and resources are there.
Although something like this would likely run afoul of the Sherman Act.
It still presents an interesting idea.
Worse tablets (Score:3)
It's obvious that if you offer a tablet with similar features to an iPad but substantially cheaper, even if it lacks in some areas (such as apps or polish), people will buy it. It doesn't take a genius to realize that. Thats pretty much what's happening with the iPhone and Android phones already. The question that interests me more is whether a worse tablet (worse specs) at a substantially reduced price point will sell well.
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> Thats pretty much what's happening with the iPhone and Android phones already.
Not quite.
What's happening with the iPhone and Android phones is that Apple is getting it's clocked cleaned. Android phones and iPhones are both equally subsidized but both are cheap enough that they represent impulse purchases. At the "impulse buy" point, Apple loses it's hype advantage. More people are willing to take risks. Apple exploited this themselves with the iPad. They dropped the tablet price from $2000 to $600.
App
Apple getting it's clock cleaned on phones? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have 50% of all the profit in the smartphone industry. They are printing money. How does that equate with getting their clock cleaned?
Re:Worse tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't been able to figure out why it seems this way. I know this to be the opposite in many ways of what actually happens. I can't easily modify an iPhone if I find it lacking, but doing so on many Android devices is easier. I also have the chance to start with a device that more exactly fits what I want. Yet it seems while using them that the iPhone is asking me the question "what do you want me to do" and the Android is telling me "this is how you do that".
Like I said, I have no idea why they come off this way to me. Perhaps it's related to UI design, or maybe it's related to responsiveness.
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Re:Worse tablets (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly there are android phones at the same price point as the iphone, except that the most popular android phones are the cheap ones which usually either have zero upfront cost or no contract. So in reality the situation is more similar to what I suggested: Android is the cheap alternative to the iPhone.
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Or, if you're going to try the Android vs iOS angle, at least view the entire iOS ecosystem which includes iPhones, iPads, _AND_ the iPod Touch (last number I saw, which was from March of 2011, was just shy of 200,000,000 - 170-ish, iirc). So, again, explain to me how Apple is getting its clock
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> Please identify a manufacturer who remotely comes close to Apple's success and sales figures.
It's a stupid argument. You might as well say that MacOS has the largest marketshare for the same dumb reason.
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Last time I checked, the purpose of a publicly held company is to make money, not to chase market share. Apple currently makes 2/3 of all profits in cell-phones -- globally.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/29/asymco.shows.apple.at.two.thirds.of.mobile.income/ [electronista.com]
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Hmmm, if having the 2 top selling phones in the US is considered having their "clocked cleaned"....
I have a better theory, look at the number 3 phone sold in the US and you will notice its the Evo 4G, a Sprint phone. The clue there? Sprint users have no access to the iPhone. It seems they will this October, though.
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You're funny.
You know, all of the "haters" said that EXACTLY this would happen. The open platform would come along and a bunch of Lilliputians working more or less together would end Apple's dominance.
Now you're trying to distort reality to hold onto this delusion that Apple is set to make up for old failures.
Self serving abuses of statistics won't alter the reality of the situation.
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Apple and Android are still both growing in share, it's Symbian and RIM [asymco.com] that have been losing. I'd say up until a week ago that Android might have had a sustainable model for share dominance, but then Google went and bought Motorola, and now the whole future of the thing is in question, if Google doesn't handle their relationship with their partners very carefully [technologizer.com].
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You're funny.
You know, all of the "haters" said that EXACTLY this would happen. The open platform would come along and a bunch of Lilliputians working more or less together would end Apple's dominance.
Dominance? It isn't that you "haters" hate, it's that you are living in a world of your own. What you guys actually said was that Apple wouldn't never sell so many iPhones they would even reach the top ten of smartphone manufacturers. Now you pretend that it dominated the market and that "you" (or rather the people who bought cheap Android phones - which you pretend don't exist) toppled them - by together selling barely twice as many phones.
Leverage (Score:4, Insightful)
What Apple's rivals should do is not just learn a lesson. They should leverage the TouchPad. Get Android working on the TouchPad which just sold hundreds of thousands of units, and keep building the Android app userbase.
Apple has had the advantage of leveraging what was originally the iPod consumer base into a mature ecosystem which has turned out to be one of the iPad's main advantages over its would-be rivals. Here's a golden opportunity for Apple's rivals to influence the future purchasing decisions of hundreds of thousands of consumers.
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> Get Android working on the TouchPad
You mean 2.3 which is open sourced and available? The 2.x branch is incredibly shitty for tablets and wont give you access to the market or any of the google apps.
If anyone does this, they have to use Honeycomb, its light years ahead of 2.x in regards to tablets. People want a proper tablet not a giant phone.
Im so sick of half-assed 2.x tablets hurting Android's reputation. Thankfully, only tinkerers will enjoy the suckitude of 2.x tablets.
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Cut the cost (Score:2)
Hell, why not free? (Score:3)
Since you are ignoring all the component and manufacturating costs that it actually takes to make these things--what the hell? why not go all the way.
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What does the component and manufacturing of a tablet cost, in relation to a laptop? I would expect tablets to be similar, if not less expensive, to produce. (Ignoring R&D costs of course, but you can make that up with high volume and low margins.)
The fact is that big conservative businesses rarely branch out into risky new technologies unless the margins are high and the margins for their existing products are nearing the end of a race to the bottom. Desktops hit the bottom, so they rushed to laptop
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"What we lose on an individual unit, we'll make up in volume."
Here's an idea (Score:2)
I picked up an ASUS Transformer for £100 less than the Motorola Xoom and it has exactly the same spec and OS
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While contemplating a "pack light" trip to Europe I am starting to reconsider the idea of a 7" tablet. It seems to be big enough to be a significant improvement over a phone while not being quite as huge as an iPad or similarly sized devices.
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On the other hand it does exactly the same as any decent smartphone, but is much harder to put into most pockets. And you'll very probably need a phone anyway.
I usually take my iPhone, the Apple BT keyboard and a glif [theglif.com]. The keyboard makes a world of a difference when writing more than just short texts, it's very light and small and you don't need to carry it all the time.
I'm kinda doing that (Score:2)
I've done something similar to that.
I've separated out both my phone and my phone plans.
I now carry around a 7" tablet, the original Galaxy Tab, which is a dream of a mobile Internet device. It's big enough to pretty much completely defuse any desire I have to carry around a laptop, while still weighing less than a pound and being totally portable. I then buy a data-only connection on this for only $25 a month from AT&T ($15 a month is also available if you don't use much data), and I have a web and app
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That's like saying we shouldn't be talking about a $15k car because nothing can come close to an M5. There's plenty of room for cheaper tablets. A lower quality LCD, Android OS, enough juice to get the whole thing running. The Nook Color retails for $250 and people have loaded Android on it and it has passable performance for simple browsing and email.
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Not the same spec.
When it was first announced, I was delighted. The detachable keyboard made it the perfect combination of tablet and netbook for me.
When it went on sale, there was no mention of it's mobile capabilities. Dual band, quad band, locked? No problem I thought, I'll go down to the local JB store and have a fondle, the spec will be on the box.
No, it wasn't. This wonderful device, thoughtfully designed to fit ALL my needs is WiFi only.
So, after I confirmed there was no 3G model coming, I bought a X
The moral of the story is... (Score:3)
$100 is the right price point for an adequate tablet with Wifi or 3g. At $700, any pad is a bad joke, especially when a netbook is $300 and $150 readers can be rooted and made to function as tablets. $100 seems too low? Remember what laptops used to cost? Manufacturers will just have to get over it. The high margin time window just gets shorter and shorter.
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Remember what laptops used to cost? Manufacturers will just have to get over it. The high margin time window just gets shorter and shorter.
laptops didn't get cheaper just because manufacturers dropped their margins. The technology got better, faster, and cheaper. In this case, HP decided to take a product that wasn't selling and sell it at a big loss. It's neat that people have snapped them up, but there's no business model here-- not unless these tablets can be sold as loss-leaders for some other expensive product.
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The TouchPard cost $328 in parts and labor, and that's ONLY parts and labor. There's also the small matter of trying to recoup the $1.2 BILLION HP spent acquiring Palm and WebOS.
I'd like an "adequate" hybrid car for $2,500 too, but I don't think I'm going to get one...
The problem of price vs. value remains. (Score:2)
A tablet is a luxury item. I can't justify spending $600 or $800 (or whatever they cost) on a tablet when I can buy a laptop or build my own desktop for something in the $300-400 range.
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Go to the local salvation army or good will, you can get a desktop for $25.
At some point, almost anything is a luxury item. (Your $300 machine vs. the used $25 machine, why pay more for the luxury of something new?)
Wrong question (Score:3)
The question isn't whether $500+ for a tablet is feasible in the market--it has been 100% proven that this is a feasible price point because Apple is selling tens of millions of iPads. The question is why can't anyone else replicate what Apple is doing with tablets?
I think part of the problem is that Apple has an even larger headstart on tablets than they had on smartphones. It also seems that the 'ecosystem' is an even more important differentiater for tablets than for smartphones. I expect Android tablets
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I think part of the problem is that Apple has an even larger headstart on tablets than they had on smartphones.
Why? I think that the introduction of the iPhone shook the phone industry to it's core and largely took them by surprise. I don't think that the Nokias and Motorolas of this world really would have thought that a PC/laptop maker like Apple would have been a serious competitor, especially after the ROKR, if you had asked them before the 9th of January 2007.
After that date all phone manufactures all of a sudden were scrambling to make something similar as they realised that Apple didn't just make a phone like
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Selling at a loss doesn't help ... (Score:3)
Selling a product at a loss doesn't help unless you have some other revenue stream.
Console makers get away with it because they license developers. Besides, the production cycle on a console is long enough to actually put them into the black over the long run.
Cellular companies get away with it because customers are locked into a contract, and have to pay a large sum to get out of it.
Tablet makers though? I guess Apple has their app store and other developers can do the same, but most they would have to sell a lot of apps to make up the difference (since most apps are significantly cheaper than most console games, if you're using that model). The service model may work, but I honestly don't know how many people are going to be willing to pay for yet another internet connection. After all, the people who buy tablets are likely already paying for home internet and cellular internet service.
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Using volume applies to lowering your margins. Sell 10 units at a $100 markup, or 100 units at a $10 markup. Increasing volume when selling at a loss only amplifies your losses, especially without another revenue stream, as the OP was saying. HP didn't have an app store, a game catalogue, VOD, etc. They were only selling the hardware.
Of course, use the TI-99/4A model (Score:2)
Customers demand more for less! (Score:2)
News at 11!
Seriously though, all it really shows is that $99 is past the impulse buy threshold for a quality tablet. Duh.
The problem is WebOS, there's no room for another (Score:3)
The same pattern keeps appearing. iPhone vs Android a few years ago and then an oddball player called the Pre came along which never drew in a lot of developers and never had the level of apps Android and iPhone enjoy. Pre failed. WebOS was later put on what was priced as essentially a feature phone, the Pixi.
Now, we're playing this game again. iPad vs Honeycomb Tablets and then WebOS appears again. Not a lot of interest, still no developers, still no apps, and HP just decided to call it quits when their forecasts said this thing was going to be another Pre.
In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
Most likely, someone will released some half-assed 2.3 ROM for this tablet and it'll suck. Shame google isn't releasing 3.2 for this thing via a side-channel. Honeycomb really is on par with ipad and makes for incredible experience.
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In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
There is no "natural monopoly" or "natural duopoly" in the OS space. There is monopolistic and anti-competitive actions that make it very hard for 3rd party options to survive. Which is the goal of Apple and MS, since they have the desktop space to themselves and they want the exact same situation in
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In operating systems there tends to be a natural monopoly and natural duopolies because of the scales involved and because people really don't crave that much choice. This is yet another example of this reality.
There is no "natural monopoly" or "natural duopoly" in the OS space. There is monopolistic and anti-competitive actions that make it very hard for 3rd party options to survive. Which is the goal of Apple and MS, since they have the desktop space to themselves and they want the exact same situation in the mobile space. This is not an example of a "natural duopoly" coming to fruition, but rather that HP could not compete on the business end of things.
This is too simple. Of course only a limited number of different systems will gain broad third-party support, just because it's too expensive to support more than one or two systems. This tends to push under fringe systems and they drown very quickly then.
How many options should app developers have to support? Three, four, five versions of their apps? For systems that look very much as if they might vanish into nothing a year later?
And of course Apple (or MS or Google) try to be one of those you can't ignor
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I don't think you're right. I think it's a very real effect that most hardware and software companies only cater to the top1-3 players in the market. For Desktop OSses that's Windows, even OSX is lagging far behind in available software and hardware with Linux a distant third. On the smartphone iOS is number one, with Android being nearly supported as well and Windows and Symbian tied for a distant third place.
It's the law of diminishing returns for hardware and software developers. At some point it's not w
Too expensive (Score:2)
I personally feel that tablets are just too expensive right now.
They are, basically, smartphones - the phone + a bigger screen. Now I'm not totally dissing this design. There have been times when reading something or wanting to show something to others that I would have loved for my phone to have a bigger screen. However, I already have my phone.
Buying a tablet is an additional cost on top of the phone. It's not like just because I'm willing to pay 200 + contract for a phone I'd be willing to pay the same a
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Buying a tablet is an additional cost on top of the phone. It's not like just because I'm willing to pay 200 + contract for a phone I'd be willing to pay the same amount for a tablet, because I actually "need" the phone. I'm not going to decide whether to buy a tablet or a phone, because the phone is much more necessary. Since their functions overlap, the tablet is a completely extra luxury device.
Yes, very much like an extra pair of shoes.
The reason this doesn't effect Apple is... well do I really have to say it? Apple users are used to overpaying for stuff.
Like people owning more than one pair of shoes? Or a car *and* a bike?
Of course a tablet is luxury. But then even a smartphone is luxury and most other things you buy anyway.
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What? You're comparing a tablet to shoes??? Shoes wear out and different types of shoes are needed for different occasions. You need a nice pair of shoes so you look professional, you need a tore up pair so you don't ruin the nice ones doing yard work, you need boots for rain/snow/mud, you need work shoes if you work construction or another job that requires a specific type of shoe.
And I can't think of a single person I know who owns more than one car that doesn't actually need more than one car. I have two
Different model for tablets:Free . (Score:2)
http://www.suntimes.com/business/6971729-420/tribune-co.-reported-to-be-readying-tablet-distribution [suntimes.com]
Same reason Verizon still exists (Score:2)
This is the same reason Verizon still exists and, until recently, why people put up with sub-par phones. Simply put, the phones were cheap or free, and people put up with the higher usage costs (say, akin to fewer apps/less usability) because of the diminished up-front cost.
If tablets were to segment as PCs did in the early 90s and offer "cheap" variants (eg. a tablet with 4G of storage and half as much RAM, maybe), maybe with cheaper displays, they would be adopted quite quickly, I think.
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Somewhat agree, but ram is dirt cheap right now and the cost of storage options in these devices is being kept artificially high by marketing rather than by parts costs. Make cheaper tablets, but with storage that more properly reflects how cheap 64 bits of flash truly is, and you might have something.
This is where Apple is vulnerable -- a significant part of their profit margin depends on people's perception that buying a device with 16 additional gigabytes should cost $110 more, and it just isn't true an
Getting developers (Score:2)
I lose $50 on every item I sell.... (Score:2)
... but I make up for it in volume.
LOWER THE PRICE!!!! (Score:2)
Lower the price! Lower the damned price. You have to be a boutique item to charge boutique prices, and the Android tablets aren't, yet, and may never be. As long as they try to go toe-to-toe with Apple on profit margins, they're only going to appeal to people who absolutely wouldn't own an Apple product but still need some kind of tablet device. Oh, as they fail one by one they'll come up with a variety of excuses, but the real reason is that the devices are too expensive for what the public perceives t
I for one (Score:2)
Q&A (Score:2)
Give up now, and sell your remaining stock at $99 a shot.
The problem is not apps (Score:2)
This article makes the typical geek mistake of assuming that Android tablets are failing due to some technical reason such as "not enough apps". This assumes customers are making perfectly rational choices and are looking at things such as "app selection" when they "buy a tablet."
Right now there is not even a "tablet" market. There is an "iPad market." That is it. I was in the DFW airport with a friend. A bunch of non-Apple gizmos were on display in a locked case. One was a tablet. "What's that?" she asked.
8 to 1 sales? Not quite... (Score:2)
The number is actually closer to 20:1, based on figures from last month [daringfireball.net]. Shipments may be going out 8:1 in favor of the iPad, but sales, at least prior to the TouchPad's fire sale, were closer to 20:1 in favor of the iPad. The difficulty is that the manufacturers, Apple excluded, are primarily offering units shipped in their quarterly reports, rather than units sold, so you have to do some calculations to put together the various figures.
HP wins the fight for Android (Score:3)
HP just unwittingly and probably unwillingly just handed the game to Android.
While the sell off of $99 tablets is certainly going to hurt Samsung, etc in the pocketbooks in terms of lost sales, the fact is almost all the people who bought the Touchpads are going to install Android on them.
In a blink of an eye, the Android tablet market just grew by over a million units sold.
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What android needs is an army of fanbois who are as dedicated to android...
You mean Slashdot? ;)
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Who are as dedicated to android as the apple fanbois are to the shit that apple sells.
Yes, I'm an android fanboi and I don't even own one (yet). I do know that I will NEVER buy an apple product.
So not so much a fan then, more a zealot.
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Who are as dedicated to android as the apple fanbois are to the shit that apple sells.
Yes, I'm an android fanboi and I don't even own one (yet). I do know that I will NEVER buy an apple product.
Most of the 200 million iOS users weren't Apple customers (or fanbois) before they bought an iPhone/iPad. What Android needs isn't more fanatic Android users, it's more Android users in the first place.
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Ever consider that all those fanbois are fans for a reason? I only own an iPod (bought in 2007) but I can see that Apple makes quality hardware and software.
Re:iPad developers vs. Android (Score:5, Insightful)
iPad ... have devout worshipers that purchase as soon as their products come out. Android people are a bit pickier when it comes to buying something, they actually take time to evaluate the products instead of the hipsters who buy a label.
It simply boggles my mind that people continue to hold on to this gibberish. Here's a secret: Apple makes products people want. You can try to portray it as an army of mindless zombies shambling along giving Apple their money but the truth of the matter is that people buy products they want. Apple is succeeding (to say the least) because they have invested a lot of effort into figuring out what people want and making that product.
There's a reason why the typical geek has zero capacity to predict future trends and accurately determine what consumers want - because they hold onto falsehoods as if they're gospel and stick their heads in the sand when the truth is shown to them.
You don't have to like Apple (and your comments make it perfectly clear that you don't) but you're a blind fool if you ignore the reasons for Apple's success. You complain about Apple "worshipers" yet your disdain for Apple and its customers is the only fanatical thing I see here.
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But you do have to admit that many long time Apple users bought the iPad with no real reason for owning it. Apple is good at packaging and marketing the stuff. I know of a few people that keep tabs on all of their stuff and have the money to buy it and not really know what they'll do with it or whether they even need it for anything.
Re:iPad developers vs. Android (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't plunk down $500 because it's cool. They plunk down $500 because they're confident that they're going to get the product they want. They plunk down $500 because it's the right price for a product they want or need.
You don't have to like Apple and you don't have to like the iPad but you'd be foolish to ignore how and why the iPad is succeeding where other tablets are absolutely, utterly failing. No, really - the HP TouchPad is fire saled. The Blackberry Playbook is utterly floundering. The stories of failed tablet products abound. A _BLACKBERRY_ tablet is failing horribly while Apple can't keep iPad's in stock. Figure out why that's happening and don't stop analyzing why once you get to "marketing" because there are more reasons than that.
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Apple is currently fed by conspicous consumers constantly buying the current season's product. They buy it just to show it off. They might not even use it.
You haven't been out in public in the last few years, have you? Walking around in the sea of white headphones should have been the first clue that these are products that get used. For that matter, any public area where laptops and other portables are common the percentage with glowing fruit on the back is much higher than Apple's 10% estimated market share. I'd say that shows that the people who buy their computers for real world use tend to buy Apple, not the other way around.
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Why even buy a tablet if all you are going to get is the same UI regardless of screen size?
Because the main apps that you're using (which are usually stock ones, such is browser and email client) are tablet-optimized anyway.
Sure, standard phone apps run on android tablets, but then again so do iPhone apps and as an iPad user, I much prefer apps that were designed for the iPad as it makes the user experience a better one.
There is a very big difference between iOS and Android in that department. When you run an iPhone app on iPad, it runs in the original iPhone resolution. This can optionally be bitmap-scaled to 2x, which is ugly and still doesn't fill the screen. Even worse is that you get the iPhone keyboard rather than iPad one.
On Android, vast majority of apps use dynamic layouts, and there