A frustrated CEO speaks: Why Android Tablets are not Selling

[=X=]

I think the real reason Android Tablets are not a hit yet is because they failed to meet customers price expectations and mostly poor marketing.

Since Apple was first to product they set the stage for price and feature. And that has set customers expectation.

Both samsung and moto had a lot of press release for the upcoming tablet space and a lot of consumer interest. Both chose to overprice their devices and lock in all users with a 3G plan.


I think many manufactures have learned their lesson and now you will see a change in marketing. Samsung new 10" and 8" tablets show they have learned. Also Asus Transformer success is proof that people do want Android tablets but they want to feel they are getting a good deal for their money.

=X=

[=X=]

You can only be too late if there is market saturation, that is from from the tablet space right now it is anybody's game.

Originally Posted by jplumey

Maybe the right word is "struggling". Regarding Asus, we have no way of knowing how many they have sold and what the demand truly is. We also don't know how many they had at their launch. They may simply have underestimate the initial launch numbers. Whatever these numbers look like, they are not even competing with the iPad's numbers.

There are numbers, they sold out the day of the launch. From a press release they only manufactured 10K because they did not expect to be so successful. They are rampping up to make 300K a month.

Asus success really goes back to the point I made in the previous post, they are truly the first Android tablet that listened to the consumer and delivered a product consumers want and value. So far all the other tablets expected to make money off of the success of the iPad.

Sadly the only other successful tablet is the nook and it has not been marketed as one.
=X=

[astrodad]

I hope they become a viable competitor to the iPad. I myself want one, but have run into the same cost issue. I don't want or need a 3G connection.

[covfam]

your right X the nook has done exceptionaly well, even though they didnt market an ipad killer.

your right Asus wasnt looking to make and market an ipad killer, they set out to make a well functioning tablet out of the box. something samsung,motorola,dell,acer,hp,notion ink has notdone.
Currently all of them needed major software or firmware work to get "promised" features to work. hopefully 2nd & 3rd generation tablets work better.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by boswd

Failing? Maybe someone forgot to tell Asus they are failing, because they are having trouble keeping up with demand.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/18/a...#disqus_thread

Interesting.

[madsquabbles]

Originally Posted by covfam

your right X the nook has done exceptionaly well, even though they didnt market an ipad killer.

your right Asus wasnt looking to make and market an ipad killer, they set out to make a well functioning tablet out of the box. something samsung,motorola,dell,acer,hp,notion ink has notdone.
Currently all of them needed major software or firmware work to get "promised" features to work. hopefully 2nd & 3rd generation tablets work better.

i seriously don't think that the others haven't made a good tablet, it just they haven't made a "cheap" version of their tablets. asus wins by making the tablet $200 less than the cheapest xoom.

the tf does have an ips screen, the build quality takes a hit judging from posts at xda and from the two i owned. but at $399, you can overlook some things - i couldn't. not everyone has the problems posted and also not everyone will notice the problems if they do have them, or they might not care.

from my experience so far, i feel the xoom is the best of the tablets at the moment. the screen on the xoom is "good enough" in most cases - people can overlook excessive light bleed in the tf, but can't stand that they can't look at their xoom at 170 degrees. the xoom's build is much sturdier, the screen is more responsive, it gets brighter, has a microUSB port for transferring from a standard cable, better audio fidelity and better speakers that are balanced correctly, only $100 more than the 32GB version of tf...

the working sd card slot on the tf is supposedly a hack, which you notice when you mount the device. the sd card is a folder w/in the device's mount point in windows and you don't really get to see the space available. google admitted that HC hasn't implemented the SD slot yet.

now i know some of my statements are opinions, but the quality control on the tf is pretty much known to quite a few. if asus had tightened up there i'd still have my tf. i'm quite jealous of those have perfectly built units and are currently enjoying their transformers.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by jplumey

Back to the original topic, I think Android tablets are failing because they are too late. When someone sees my wife with her Kindle, they ask her if that's an iPad. When they see my friend with his Samsung Galaxy Tab, they ask how he likes his iPad. The iPad has almost become synonymous with "the tablet", at least among regular consumers.

Reminds me of the video game market and the generalizations made there.

During the late-80's and early-to-mid-90's, regardless of the system you were playing, you were "playing Nintendo."

The late-90's up until about 2007-ish, you were "playing Playstation." (I had a Gameboy Advance, and my mom would ask what game I wanted for my Playstation)

Now, it's "playing X-Box."

The most popular/highest-selling brand was/is used to generalize what the player was using.

Also like the south and "Coke." "What kind of Coke do you want?" "Mountain Dew."

[covfam]

hehe i knwo what you mean i drive my wife nutz when i keep calling our dvd player and the DVR on our cable box the VCR to me it will always be a VCR

[wodin]

And my xerox machine is made by Fujitsu.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Also like the south and "Coke." "What kind of Coke do you want?" "Mountain Dew."

My favorite coke is root beer and I always buy generic kleenex

[anamardoll]

We have four different Android devices in our home - a Nook Color rooted with autonooter, a Nook Color running CM7 from SD card, an AT&T Captivate running their flavor of Android, and a Motorola Droid running their flavor.

Each of these devices has roughly 100 apps installed from Google Market, which significant overlap in terms of what's installed on what.

Despite the IMMENSE FRAGMENTATION of these four different flavors of Android, all the apps work perfectly fine regardless of which device they are on. The ONLY problem I've ever had with an app was the Remember the Milk app not working on the Autonooter NC. Everything else works perfectly.

The only reason we haven't invested in a bigger tablet than the NCs is because of the price point. We're not going to pay $800 for a tablet that isn't going to be worth a quarter of that price in a couple of years.

Everything else is - to us - just noise. I like the Android OS and I'm perfectly happy with everyone having their own flavor - it's one of the reasons, in my opinion, why it has gotten as popular as it has. The good flavors will rise to the top and the crappy ones will sink to the bottom of the bargain bin. Well, that's my belief anyway.

[jocampo]

I'm not a "brand" lover person. If a company produces a product that I like, I will buy it. For instance, like MS-SQL, but I don't use Windows at home, only Ubuntu Linux. So I am not into Apple vs Google debates.

Having said that, I think that 10" Android tablets have not sold very well for these three reasons:

-Price
-Operating System itself
-Available apps

Price is quite obvious.
Those who went ahead an bought most recent Android tablets, paid a big price, including myself with GT. Not complaining about it, but for about $400.00 you can get a 1st gen iPad which already give you access to thousands of iPad apps, not the same for Honeycomb.

Here in USA, the economy is still struggling. So tablets are no more than expensive toys for people who can afford those. I consider myself blessed (good job, good salary) but you need to think twice when expending more than $500.00 on a device that can't do everything a netbook does.

Operating System
Lot of arguments and debate about this topic but the true is that Honeycomb was not ready for the market yet. It does not matter if was final, pre-release, beta, whatever version. People want and like something that just works. And in my opinion, paying for something now, and get all the features later, is unacceptable and a poor marketing strategy; lot of people did not buy that idea and are waiting. To me, it was clear that they rushed Xoom because iPad 2 release.

Available apps.
One of the reason why I am happy with my Galaxy Tab, besides the size, is that there are a lot of available apps for it. When I say available, I'm referring to apps that have been already optimized for that screen or they just don't look weird on the 7" screen. 10" is a big jump! So even though you can run and install lot of apps, if the app. was not specifically designed for Honeycomb you are not getting what you paid for... so, what's the deal? If I paid for Honeycomb, I want an app that is ready and look nice for Honeycomb. I am paying for a bigger screen!

Make a $500 or $600 10" screen tablet, and more and better Honeycomb apps and I will think about it, even selling my iPad 2. Meantime, thanks but no thanks, I'll keep enjoying what I have.

[TallMomof2]

The chief reason I purchased the Asus TF was for the keyboard dock. Once joined the TF and dock are about the size of a netbook. Plus Asus listens to its customers. They've released patches for both pieces of hardware and the programmers read and occasionally respond on XDA.

Build quality is hit or miss. Mine has no issues and with the latest updates works better than any other Android device I've owned (and I've owned more than a few.) I know several people who received poorly built iPads but were able to exchange them for better ones.

So far none of the apps I've run on smaller screens look bad on the TF.

Reasons why Android tablets haven't sold as well include:

1. Not made by Apple.
2. Not marketed at all compared to Apple.
3. Price, at least the TF is a bit less than comparable 10" tablets. (You can't call the discounted Viewsonic gTab comparable because the screen is not nearly as nice as the TF's.)

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Reasons why Android tablets haven't sold as well include:

1. Not made by Apple.

Without getting into Flame War territory, this is a positive aspect for a non-insignificant portion of the market.

[tbear]

Originally Posted by covfam

i fear the "open" android will eventually become what unix is. unix and its various offshoots is very good. but mainstream does not touch it at all except apples OSX & IOS. Android is based off of linux wich in turn is based off of Unix as well but if you keep it too open you will get what happened to linux (only techies use it)
you need to streamline it and make it sexy and user friendly "dont confuse it with techie friendly"

IMHO, the user unfriendly-ness of linux and android is WAY exaggerated.
Most people don't use linux just because they have never heard of it.
Market is always biased toward market leader, and a market leader tries to make best use of it. For example, OSX itself was at first very frequently advertised by its openness and being unix. But these days, apple is trying hard to deviate OSX from other unix OSes AFTER achieving some success, not the other way around.
If you are suggesting that this path is what google android has to go,
I would rather choose another new alternative instead.