“When I wrote about why Android tablets did a faceplant coming out of the starting gate in 2011, the most common reaction was that I had written off Google too quickly,” Jason Hiner writes for TechRepublic. “After all, it wasn’t until Android smartphones were on the market for over a year until they really took off. Just give it more time, for crying out loud. That was the general refrain.”
“But, the problem with Android tablets isn’t a time or maturity issue,” Hiner writes. “It’s that Google and all of its hardware partners are playing the wrong game and they haven’t realized it yet.”
“Samsung, ASUS, Acer, and Toshiba — all spurred on by Google — seem to think that shoving hi-res cameras, USB ports, HDMI connections, quad core processors, keyboard docks, and a handful of dongles at customers will give their tablets a fundamental advantage over Apple and the iPad,” Hiner writes. “Here’s the problem. How many times have you seen someone doing a video call from a tablet? How often have you seen someone hook up a tablet to a 50-inch HDTV and use it to play HD movies and games? How many people do you know who have hooked up a keyboard to their tablet and completely ditched their laptop? I’ve used virtually all of the top tablets on the market over the past two years and I’ve rarely done any of those things with them. I have lots of friends and colleagues with tablets and they almost never talk about doing any of those scenarios.”
“This all boils down to the fact that the technology market is no longer dominated by technology lovers. Google, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, Toshiba, and others like them need to stop acting like the PC clone makers of the 1980s and 90s, and thinking as if they’re building computers for the technically-inclined. The market is a lot bigger than that today and it’s now dominated by people who couldn’t care less about a gigahertz or a megapixel,” Hiner writes, “Android tablets made a bet on making tablets more like traditional PCs and it failed. The sooner they realize that, the better. Android tablet makers need to change strategy and focus on the things that tablets are good at. (And, Microsoft should take note before Windows 8 tablets hit the market later this year, because they’re about to make the same mistake.)”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hiner’s article is all good except where he swallows Amazon’s claim of Kindle Fire success almost to the point of equating it with Apple’s iPad success. That simply isn’t the case and its inclusion in the article runs the risk of undermining the other solid points made within.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GetMeOnTop ” for the heads up.]