“Tablet computers were the highlight of Asia’s largest computer exhibition, the annual Computex Taipei, which was expected to attract as many as 120,000 visitors this week after opening its doors in the Taiwan capital on June 1,” Martin J. Young reports for Asia Times Online. “The five-day event showcases 1,715 exhibitors, including some big industry names such as Asus, Acer, AMD, Intel, Fujitsu, Microsoft and Nvidia.”
“The strong emphasis on tablet computers follows Apple’s success with the iPad,” Young reports. “More than 30 versions of rivals to the American company’s handheld touch-screen device were expected to be showcased. Apple claims to have sold over 2 million iPads within 60 days of the product launch earlier this year.”
“Taiwan-based AsusTek announced a powerful tablet computer aptly named the Eee Pad, which will run with Windows 7 and be driven by a dual core Intel processor,” Young reports. “The unit, a direct rival to the iPad, will be available in 10-inch and 12-inch versions starting at US$399. The cheapest iPad on the market, with only 16 gigabyte storage, no 3G, and very limited specifications, starts at $499, so the one real player in the market so far could soon face very intense competition.”
MacDailyNews Take: Keep dreamin’, Marty.
Young continues, “Other manufacturers such as Acer, Dell, Lenovo and HP Compaq are expected soon to follow suit with their own tablets, so consumers are likely to have a lot more choice over hardware specifications, operating systems and software applications if they haven’t already shelled out for an iPad.”
“The winner in the long run is likely to be the company that offers the most apps – small software applications that can be downloaded and installed on the handheld device, be it a tablet or a smart-phone,” Young reports. “At the moment Apple has it in the bag with three years lead over its competitors and around 200,000 apps in its online store, but Google is catching up fast.”
MacDailyNews Take: Over 210,000, Marty. And, if you consider Android having less than a quarter of Apple’s iPhone OS apps while Apple’s app count keeps increasing everyday as “catching up,” you need a dictionary.
Young continues, “Google, by making its Android software open source and allowing anyone to develop anything without all of the cloak-and-dagger secrecy and restrictions found in the Apple camp, is bound to emerge as the platform of choice sooner or later.”
MacDailyNews Take: There’s nothing biased in good ol’ Marty’s reporting, is there?
Young continues, “Adding to this momentum is the fact that Android will be running on devices from multiple manufacturers and carriers; and that around 57% of Android’s apps are free compared with only 25% of Apple’s, according to analytics from Distimo, a website that monitors app stores. In the world of technology, the two essential ingredients for product success seem to be choice and the f-word – ‘free’ – and Google offers both.”
MacDailyNews Take: Young continues: Don’t buy Apple products. Instead buy cheap knockoffs from Asia that are based on angelic Google’s fake iPhone OS. Why worry about patent infringement lawsuits overhanging Android, when you can have an insecure device with inferior software? Who wants the real thing when you can have a cheap half-assed fake for 67-cents less? (Of course, we wrote that, not Young, but he might as well have.)
Young continues, “Negotiations continued this week on whether to include Microsoft’s Bing search engine as the prominent option on Apple’s iconic iPhone, which at present has Google as the dominant search option. With Android’s share of the mobile-phone market already surpassing Apple’s, the latter now appears to view its former arch enemy as less of a threat than the upstart Google.”
MacDailyNews Take: Android’s share of the mobile-phone market has not surpassed Apple’s. Period.
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
Source: Gartner (May 2010)
Misusing a limited NPD survey that fails to measure little niches, like, oh, say, the business market, is the province of fools and liars. Which is it, Marty, are you a liar or a fool or, most likely, both?
• Apple: Widely-misreported NPD data does not provide complete picture of U.S. smartphone market – May 11, 2010
• Don’t be misled by poorly-reported NPD Android vs. iPhone stats – May 11, 2010
Full article – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: People who pine for poor imitations of Apple products would be perplexing if we didn’t understand that the root of it is money, if not a pathological hatred of quality and superiority.
Suicide bombers
That should read over 30 future iPad victims.
Sick and funny, breeze.
“Toucha toucha toucha touch me, I wanna be dirty
Thrill me chill me fulfil me
Creature of the night.”
Windows 7 runs like crap in a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, I can’t imagine how it will run in a 400 dollar tablet. You may as well flush your 400 dollars down the drain. But hey at least it will have USB ports, LOL.
What is even worse about this FUD is that he is reporting from an Asian perspective so when he says that Android market share has overtaken Apple he would be implying he is either talking about Asia of the World as a whole as no American market is even mentioned. This of course makes the disinformation even more pronounced as in no statistics is Android even in the same league as Apple in the World market. Of course his lies are entirely down to the fact that he is rooting for his local manufacturers but the lack of subtlety is laughable.
“”Negotiations continued this week on whether to include Microsoft’s Bing search engine as the prominent option on Apple’s iconic iPhone”
How does he know that? Did he make it up, or is he just regurgitating a rumor as fact?
I guess he’s saying a higher percentage of Android developers don’t want to make money. Right.
Like fish in a barrel…
What a crock of bullshit! Strange how tablet computers have been coming Real Soon Now for ten years and suddenly, now that Apple have shown the entire industry how it’s done, every bugger on the planet is claiming to have an iPad killer in the pipeline. R&D;lead times on such devices have to be measured in years but all these manufacturers now have tablets coming out a scant few weeks after the launch of the iPad.
Once again, Apple lead and everyone else follows. There isn’t a single original thought among the lot of them. What a bunch of pathetic fools!
=:~)
I would wager that 25% of Apple’s 210,000 apps being free still amounts to more free apps than whatever 57% of Google’s apps amounts to, which means that Apple still offers more choice and more ‘f-word’ apps
This is a good thing, let these cheap Asian knock-offs come stateside. People will flock to Walmart and Costco to buy them, thinking that at the bargain price of $399 (after a $100 rebate) they’re getting a great deal. Hard reality will set in once these Windows 7 driven tablets are tested in action. Ha! That little spinning hour-glass will become the brand logo of the Walmart tablet set. Hey, that would make a great t-shirt: “I bought my tablet at Walmart… for real cheap!” with the little spinning hourglass as the logo.
C’m on people!! ,Apps with ads are free!!Software developers they all need to make a living, they all have bills to pay, so let’s be ” fair “, we need to support: Quality And creativity.No all good things are “F”.
I wish that I had 629 friends that would each loan me $1.
Wi-Fi + 3G
over 230,000 apps numnuts
So, according to this frigtard, the iPhone OS has more free apps, than Android has in total? I think he just proved the iPhone OS will win.
@Dirty Pierre le Punk
Yes, and not only that… a very high percentage of the apps can be had for 99¢ – $2.99. Somehow I doubt there are many comparable quality apps in that price range on the other app stores.
And yes… they’ll all run Flash, they’ll all have USB ports and card readers and cameras. They’ll use a stylus, have voice and none of them will work right. They’ll sell dozens of these things- I’m tellin ya.
They still think it’s about hardware.
I’m waiting for one of these companies to really “innovate” and just break a net book or laptop in half and hide the keyboard behind the monitor and make it a slide out keyboard so they can brag about this “feature” not available on the iPad.
“MacDailyNews Take: Android’s share of the mobile-phone market has not surpassed Apple’s. Period.”
And even if it became true, so what? A bunch of fragmented and incompatible versions of the free OS “Android” running in multiple cheapo phones by multiple carriers — an irrelevant number, if there ever was one.
Good… market dilution and confusion. All the better to drive people to Apple, which is the best, safest choice.
I find it ironic that as much bitching as MDN does about Flash, my browser just completely locked up and froze because of a stupid Flash ad on this website (slow script error).
Put your money where your mouth is MDN and ban Flash-based ads.
This is gonna be FUN…
“The unit, a direct rival to the iPad, will be available in 10-inch and 12-inch versions starting at US$399. The cheapest iPad on the market, with only 16 gigabyte storage, no 3G, and very limited specifications, starts at $499, so the one real player in the market so far could soon face very intense competition.”
ROTFLMAO!
Yeah, because the “stuff it with a few extra features and knock a hundred bucks off the price” strategy worked so well for all those iPod and iPhone “killers”, didn’t it?!?
Google is catching up fast
Google will never catch up, not unless somehow Android apps start to be made at a much higher rate than iPhone OS apps. And really, does anyone see any chance of that happening any time soon? You can’t catch up with somebody unless you’re going faster than him!
57% of Android’s apps are free compared with only 25% of Apple’s
Kudos to Dirty Pierre le Punk for pointing out how meaningless this statistic is. 25% of Apple’s apps (that would currently be around 52,000) is not much smaller than the size of Android’s entire catalog.
Y’know, MDN gets a lot of sh*t on the net for being frothing-mouth paranoid when it comes to criticism of Apple. But c’mon — only an idiot or a fanatical Apple-hater could fail to see the distortions and outright lies in this article.
I look forward to seeing each and every one of these iPad-killers fall flat on their faces, the same as all the iPod and iPhone killers did.
——RM
These ppl r all freaking delusional. Period.
It’s just sad.
AssesTek’s “Eee Pad” is not promised until some unspecified date in 2010. If that’s the best example for a Windows 7 -based tablet that will “challenge” iPad, give it up now. HP tried and gave up (once Apple reset the expectations for tablets) and bought Palm to try again with WebOS.
Android WILL be the platform of choice…for hackers, viruses, and malware…
You cannot kill the Revolution that has been won, you can only play catch-up and be second place at best.
I would bet the stylus for these windows 7 devices will weigh more than the iPad; but Gates will be happy.
Don’t forget that pride cometh before the fall. Nonetheless it promises to be an interesting war, particularly if the android based tablets are significantly cheaper than the iPad…and we are the winners. While the app store may have 500 billion apps, if the growing cloud of perceived (and somewhat imagined) evilness on apple’s horizon continues to gather then Apple’s shiny patina may become less glossy and far less appealing…
It’s the OS Stupid. No one has developed an OS that can “touch” the iOS!
If Apple hadn’t made the iPad, no-one would be making these 30 knock-off devices, 30 devices doomed to fight each other over the left-over crumbs. iPod history is being repeated in phones, and now tablets.
All the wannabes will crowd the same market segment, meaning that thirty models have to compete over price and feature lists for initially 30% of the market. We know how this worked out for non-iPod MP3 players.
LOL, m159, I was too slow.
voice control works brilliantly on apple stuff doesn’t it?
What good is an ipad if you can only use two gb of info I mean what two movies a month this is terrible how did apple let Att cap this i can’t see how anyone could enjoy an ipad on 2 gb a month I stream radio all day long as I check my emails and work online I sell books though amazon I handle all my transactions though my iPhone and between listening to old time radio and pandora, and a few news videos I go though around 500 mb a day I pay over 140 a month for my unlimited service. I don’t have access to wifi here so that’s not an option so pretty much if I had to stay withen 2gb thus iPhone my most prized possession would be usless after just four days I don’t believe the average iPhone user only uses 200 mb a month if that’s the case than they are not using the iPhone it’s just sitting there this was a mistake that I hope Att pays for when people decide with thier wallets to switch to anouther unlimited plan with the 2nd best smartphone
re:Google, by making its Android software open source and allowing anyone to develop anything without all of the cloak-and-dagger secrecy and restrictions found in the Apple camp…End of BS quote…
These clowns just don’t get it…By allowing any piece of excrement to be released to the public is what will ultimately destroy the Android platform…You simply can not allow some two bit wannabe software creator to ruin the user experience, yet that’s exactly what Android is doing and bragging about it to boot…Take a look at the most successful companies in the world, Mc Donalds, Disney, etc…They all follow a proven formula which ensures that their customers all have a great experience time and time again just as Apple ensures, How successful would Mickey D’s be if they allowed every fry cook to put his own personal twist on your Big Mac, my guess, they would have went off the map decades ago…Android is a recipe for disaster and luckily for Apple they are too full of themselves to recognize it….
Dude, if you asked any normal person who doesnt really give a shit about tech, “What OS is you phone?” The answer would be pretty simple. How many people use a phone and because they are used to it just come out with the same blurb “I just want a phone to call and SMS i dont need all that other shit”
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But they grab my iphone and they play it for hours. My father now says, shit son that bloody iphone of yours is easy to use. Next phone Ill get will be one of those. Ill wait for them to get cheaper
OR
I got this Blackberry but when it craps out im gonna get an iphone, cant yet cus this piece of shit with the tiny buttons, and horrible little screen just cost me $800.
As of April 2010: (Please forgive me if there are more updated numbers)
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-market-unofficially-passes-50000-apps
Google’s official count at the time was at 38000 which is currently less than 25% of Apple’s entire catalog. Even if you stick with the 50000 number it’s still less than the 25%.
Percentages mean crap if you don’t look at the hard numbers. Sure 57% is larger than 25% but 28500 is less than 52500. So who has more free apps???
Android may be open source, and may allow more opportunity to write and publish apps but if you look at companies writing apps people want to use, it’s all on the iPhone. If a developer has to make a choice of one OS to write an app for it will be for the iPhone OS hands down. When was the last time you saw an app on Android that you wished was on Apple? And for those of you who do not have an iPhone (myself included) or iPad, how many times have you seen an app written for Apple that you wished your OS had. (All the time!!!)
As for as all the 30 tablets coming out it should not be a great surprise. We in the public all knew an Apple tablet was coming long before it was announced, don’t you think those in the biz new way before us? And if you found out Apple was working on something, wouldn’t you work hard to find out what it was and rush out a product to steal some of their thunder and marketshare?
It makes sense, and there are a couple that I would not mind having.
The Kno while sure super sized does look super cool. I would have considered getting one if I didn’t already have an iPad.
I’ve said it before in a previous post; people are price whores. A Mercedes may be a high quality car with a lot of included options, but if I have a Hyundai budget guess what tablet I’m buying? (Did that make sense? lol) Some people like and can afford quality most cannot, especially in these financially challenging times.
Good thing for Apple though is the iPad is priced very competitively and when iPad 2.0 comes out next year and this years model comes down in price, watch those iPads fly.
I love apple products as much as the next guy. But come on your macdailynews takes are rather lame.
@ Powers
Then get one before June 7, while you can still get an unlimited 3G plan from AT&T;. Also, try using some freaking punctuation!
What I would really have liked to see is a USB 3.0 port on the side of the iPad so that a third party (or Apple) could allow you to dock it in landscape mode. Plus all the other things you could do with that port. Now THAT would be useful in a lot of ways! Everything else I can wait for or do without.
Of course people want free stuff but doesnt this show what platform developers think can make them more money? And can the reason why so many apps are free on the android market have something to do with App quallity? I’m not saying that is the reason but it can be, fully or in part. People buying Apple stuff in general have more money and are willing to spend, and do spend more on music and programs than PC ppl.
If any Bozo sitting on his couch holding himself can write a crap app and get it on Android, does that help Android?. The app writer can say”I have an app”, but what is the quality and, more important, the security of said “Crap App”?.
Wish I could edit: “Crap App™”.
While I’m all for competition, it makes Apple work harder, I think there may be too many choices that will confuse the consumer market. With the iPad, you know what you are getting since it really only comes in two flavors, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi w/ 3G. Other than that the only differences are in memory.
Since the iPad IS targeted at the consumer market more than the just the techies, it only makes since to keep it simple for Grandma.
Used an Acer touchscreen using windows 7 yesterday at PC shop, it used an Acer made “TOuch Portal” layer over the top.
If it is a sign of things to come using windows 7, it was downright farking horrible… No thanks!
Apple need to offer the OPTION of loading apps from other sources on to the iPad.
Excellent article on Tech Night Owl live with Jason Snell outlining how this could be done without affecting those who will prefer to stay within Apple app store.
“More than 30 versions of rivals to the American company’s handheld touch-screen device were expected to be showcased.”
Setting aside how many of these devices will be crap that dies a rapid death…
How many Apple patent violations will these 30+ devices perpetrate? My guess is that upwards of two-thirds of these devices rip-off Apple.
I bet the lawyers are licking their chops in anticipation.
:-[
The little teeny tiny hidden SECRET about most of these rival iPad knockoffs is their profoundly bad…
shhhh
security
shhhh
This is why Apple will continue to require any App professionally sold for the iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad to be approved and signed by Apple.
The winner in quality devices = the most secure to use. That continues to mean Apple versus Blackberry.
The winner in crap devices = cheapest to buy. That’s the 30+ ‘iPad Killers’. Crap sells. Crap also smells. Expect them to turn into malware sewers. It’s already happening in the Android market, WinCE market, Symbion market…
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“More than 30 versions of rivals to the American company’s handheld touch-screen device were expected to be showcased.”
Were? DId they or didn’t they?
——————————————
“the Eee Pad, which will run with Windows 7”
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
haha, “iPad Killers”. That’s a good one. You know a product is going to suck when the cornerstone to its marketing is exposing supposed flaws of other popular devices.