The smartphone market is a helluva lot different from the tablet market, a fact hardware makers are slowly but surely starting to realize. Though Android was able to make significant and impressive gains on the iPhone relatively quickly, it’s an entirely different ballgame when it comes to tablets.
To wit, the Motorola Xoom was launched on February 24th and hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm. Buggy software and an appallingly low number of apps have yielded less than stellar sales figures that, last we’ve heard, were still hovering in the low 100,000’s.
In light of that, and compounded by supply issues as a result of the Japan earthquakes, a number of hardware manufacturers are delaying the launch of their own tablet offerings in order to prevent, or perhaps delay, getting chewed up and spit out by Apple.
DigiTimes reports that Google’s hardware partners are temporarily shelving their plans to go head to head with the iPad on account of “brand image, pricing, insufficient applications and the unstable performance of Android 3.0 as reasons for the doldrums.”
Asus, for example, recently announced the delay of its Android 3.0 tablets, dubbed the Eee Pad, from mid-April to May while HTC has also decided to postpone its own Flyer tablet offering.
Back in early January, however, things were looking a whole lot different as CES was draped in upcoming tablet offerings from an inordinate number of manufacturers. But without carrier support, both in advertising and retail, taking on the Apple juggernaut is proving much more daunting than most would have initially assumed.
April 18th, 2011 at 9:09 am
This means Apple’s competitors have decided to not compete with the iPad because they don’t have a competitive product. They are still at the drawing board stage of development.
Google, in particular, is highly to blame. Google tried to create an entirely new, more PC-like OS, cutting corners in the process. The result is a bug filled OS which frequently crashes.
Hardware manufacturers, like Asus, are simply like dumb pipes in this process of creating an Android Tablet, being highly dependent on Google for doing its job. Unfortunately, Google failed.
Now, Google wants to hide its code while it works on it in order to hide the poor workmanship that went into Android 3.0. Android 3.0 is not ready for prime time. Like many of Google’s products, it is a perpetual beta.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:31 am
No mass market for an android tablet above $299, the price where you can sub a win pc netbook. Android phones are only viable when they are $.01 with a contract – otherwise, weak sales. All android hones drop to ‘free’ after a few weeks – why verizon went running back to apple and why the iPhone us Verizon’s best sellingphone even though Verizon’s is nearly 6 months after at&ts …