Quote:
Originally Posted by =X=
Well technically there is...
I'm not sure if you aware, but Android OS handled apps differently than iOS. The iOS devices really only have two screen sizes, iPhones/iTouch and iPads. For the iPad to run iPhone apps it runs them in a compatibility mode where the screen size is fixed, they also have a 2x zoom factor. Therefore it's very important for iPad users to have iPad apps made so they can take advantage of the real estate.
For the Android OS apps are dynamically scalable. With the exception of a few apps most apps scale up to fill the screen size just fine. There are many apps that dynamically detect whether the device is a tablet or mobile device and initialize the app accordingly. For instance I purchased Moon+ an ebook reader, that one purchase gives me an app that has logic to determine whether it is running on a tablet device or a phone and optimizes it's layout based accordingly. The Kindle, nook, and Opera is yet more examples.
Point is most apps are tablet ready, there will be very few apps that are tablet only. So the "tablet specific" apps for Android will always be very low.
=X=
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The positive aspect is that in general, android apps scale up really well and look much better than iphone apps do on an ipad. However, there are still areas where apps are stretched in a strange way, or don't really take advantage of the screen (For example, I bought Jewellust Christmas from the android market and had to return it because it looked terrible scaled up). On my nook color, I actually had to use the Spare Parts app to get many apps to fill the screen.
Currently, I have a rule that I won't install any app that does not have a tablet friendly version on my ipad (Skype is the only exception because the video/voice still works really well).
The negative aspect is that most android apps are not optimized for tablets (screen real estate, higher specs, etc). There are hardly any tablet specific apps. Even with my self imposed rule for apps on my ipad, there are an overwhelming number of quality tablet specific apps (currently 80,000 ipad optimized). If you are using a 7" device, it isn't that big of a deal. On a 10.1" device, the issue is more prevalant.
One of the criticisms that I hear about ios so often is that it is just a really simple app launcher. My response would be that the apps are the critical part of the experience. I don't buy a pc to play around with, customize, and stare at my desktop. I want good, quality programs.
I'd rather a phone-like launcher that launches tablet optimized apps than a tablet optimized launcher that launches phone apps.
If we look at some of the apps that Samsung optimized for the Galaxy Tab, we can see the contrast between a phone app and a tablet app (Calender, email, contacts, memo). This is where android apps should move towards. If you play with the CNN app on the Xoom, you can see how an app optimized for tablets is superior. So, it is a valid criticism that the lack of tablet optimized apps in the android market is a significant disparity compared with the apple app store, despite the superior scaling ability of android apps.