“After seeing major companies like Research in Motion, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard struggle in the tablet market against the iPad, notebook vendors are ‘backing away from the tablet PC bandwagon,’ according to DigiTimes,” Sam Oliver reports for AppleInsider. “In a report issued Thursday, it was said that notebook makers are ‘turning pessimistic’ about the tablet market outside of the iPad.”
“Those hardware makers reportedly believe that Google’s forthcoming update for its Android mobile operating system, ‘Ice Cream Sandwich,’ will not help them overcome the market dominance seen by Apple’s iPad,” Oliver reports. “‘The sources pointed out that non-Apple players may need to wait until the Android version after Ice Cream Sandwich or Windows 8 hit the market to fight back against Apple,’ the report said.”
Oliver reports, “In a separate story, DigiTimes also reported Thursday that Amazon’s own tablet, expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2011, has a questionable future ahead of it, according to industry insiders. Specifically, sources in the supply chain for Amazon’s tablet reportedly question whether the retailer is wise for releasing a 7-inch model when Apple has found success with a 9.7-inch display on the iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.
It looks like the competition is finally waking up to reality; Steve Jobs stated that 2011 was the year of iPad 2. They finally got the memo! Welcome to the world that Apple is creating.
“Ice Cream Sandwich” – can a tech product name can get any more ridiculous than that?
They did make a bid in recent memory that was fordged around Pie err pi or something. 😉
How about Zune?
Dude I said the same thing in another article bout a week ago and every homo and his one eyed dog reckoned I was a dickhead cause it was a codename. But hey great minds think alike, get a realname aye!
I think “Turd Sandwich” would be more appropriate. Android is such a POS.
Sounds like they’re predicting the Ice Cream Sandwich to melt even before it comes out if the freezer.
‘The sources pointed out that non-Apple players may need to wait until the Android version after Ice Cream Sandwich or Windows 8 hit the market to fight back against Apple.” Wow, so now we’re looking ahead TWO versions before any viable competition shows up? 2015 should be a pretty fun year huh?
Android (if it even survives the legal road ahead) and Windows will be playing catch up for years while eating so much iOS dust by that they won’t even be able to see Apple’s new products at all!
Can you imagine being told, “Well, write something.”
Other than “Apple won,” that is.
Ice cream headache.
Everyone is assuming that Amazon is building its tablet to compete with the iPad. It could very well be that Amazon is simply using Android as a free OS to continue the Kindle with minimal feature upgrades rather than putting the development time and cost into its own OS. That also would allow for some simple features, like email and web browsing (home page default: Amazon.com!), and Amazon would not have to do much R&D for it.
The “Kindle” version of Android will be unrecognizable as Android. It will be used to push Amazon’s services (and avoid Google’s). For example, apps will come from Amazon’s Appstore. Ebooks from Kindle store. Music from Amazon’s MP3 store (with “Cloud Drive” access). It will be like a completely different OS, from the user’s perspective, just as Mac OS X is based on Unix, but it is unlike any other Unix implementation.
You are right. Amazon’s tablet will be an extension of their Kindle device, not a direct iPad competitor. And in that capacity, it may be reasonably successful, if the price is low enough, for people who want to be tied to Amazon’s services.
But those services are accessible from iOS devices, so in my opinion, Amazon is only helping to make iPads and iPhones more useful. And Amazon profits more from selling content (not devices), so I don’t think they care that a customer is using a “Kindle” or an iPad. I use the Kindle app on my iPhone to buy and read ebooks.
If MSFT is quietly approaching all OEMs using Android for patent fees, you can bet the Ice Cream Sandwich tablet makers are factoring in those costs as well.
Good business to be in — MSFT did the R&D & patent work years ago, and now GOOG does the current coding work, the OEMs do the hardware, both take on all the business risk, and MSFT collects a sweet little fee.
Most Ice Cream Sandwiches are inferior Ice Cream and down right nasty if you have any taste at all.
The only thing they are good for is to pacify dumb kids.
Makes sense to my why Android is got a name like that, truth in advertising laws.
Amazon think they have brand loyalty too? Yup dont buy an ipad from Apple Computer go buy a spin off from a book company running an operating system named after a supermarket item. Geez do they actually get it?
This story definitely seems more likely. I could understand if all those Android tablet vendors were working with loads of money to burn, but they’re not, especially looking at today’s stock market uncertainty. They’re taking a huge risk of spending money up front to get almost no returns. If they’re smart, they won’t even have large production runs just to minimize the risk which in turn will lower their margins for whatever small amount of product they manage to sell. Fact. They’re all struggling just to break even. Apple is not even breaking a sweat except to try to keep up with product demand.
Analysts keep yapping about how this coming Amazon tablet is going to somehow put a dent into Apple’s iPad market share. If anything, it will just put a bigger dent into all the other Android tablet vendors who are already being squeezed. It’s funny how analysts used to claim when the iPad first came out that consumers wouldn’t want to watch anything on a 9.7″ display because it was too small. Now they’re claiming that Amazon is going to put pressure on Apple’s iPad by employing a tablet with a smaller 7″ display. Analysts attitudes sure do change with the weather. I get the feeling that Amazon is under Wall Street’s protection for some reason or the other. Some faction is definitely pumping up the company in the media and inflating the share price.
If the quality of the Amazon tablet is below standard that may be the finishing blow to put all Android tablets to rest. A tablet venture failure could definitely prove damaging to Amazon if they’ve sunk a lot of money into it. Definitely a high risk venture that Bezos is gambling on.
A comment I heard is that it won’t be a competitor to the iPad, but a competitor to the Nook. This makes sense to me – if they make them cheap enough, they will sell plenty.
I think the Nook Color is a fad. I know some people who bought one and they’re collecting dust. Cheap and different in the beginning may be cool, but the market, I think, is just correcting itself moving forward. And we’re in a recession and will be probably for several more years. With that, I don’t think people will continue to buy and waste money on the Nook Color in the way they are much longer. The fad is running out.
And for all the other Android junker tablets out there, they’re all DOA.
I predict that the Amazon tablet will get some traction early on and just fade into oblivion, as the iPad continues its dominance for the next several years. This Amazon tablet is going to cost Amazon a lot of money moving forward because they’ll sell it at low-to-break even prices to try and push their bloated ecosystem that seems to be losing its appeal as the days go by. Then they’ll realize that people are continuing to gravitate to the iPad/iPhone and therefore Apple’s ecosystem and that these tablet users don’t need Amazon at all.
In short, Amazon can’t control people anymore through a gimmick product like the Kindle. People are using a general purpose computer like the iPad that does a whole ton of things and doesn’t really restrict where you buy your content in terms of books, etc.
So the new Amazon Android Tablet? Just another spaghetti noodle thrown at the wall that won’t end up sticking. Amazon moving forward to me will become less and less relevant, and end up dying out, swallowed up in the wave of zillions of other innovations and big companies. Right now, all Jeff Bezos can do is throw a ton of stuff out there and see what sticks. They don’t seem to have any grand vision anymore, they’re just operating in an ad hoc way. A digital library? That’s what I heard Bezos is chasing next. All this comes off as delusions of grandeur. RIP Amazon.
We all know Android is a bad and illegal copy of iOS, but it is still very similar. Why isn’t the current Android version good enough to compete?