Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
I agree with this-the first generation of competitors tried to play Apple's game, "just like the iPad but thinner! with Flash! SD Card! HD screen!".
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As far as I am concerned, it would be a mistake to judge the impact of this wave of Android tablets by the marketing messages used to sell them. Don't get me wrong, these thinly veiled lies were and still are a mistake. The Android (world) is still not ready to take on iPad. Yet.
It is a part of net folklore that iPad was labeled as a "big screen iTouch"? Most of the owners agree that this was "a good thing"(tm). What Apple has achieved is maximization of their major strength, the fat inventory of iPhone/iTouch apps. The transition (of software) to bigger screen is almost finished, and Apple got where it wanted to be in very short time. If there is any weakness in their position, it is that very big number of apps that already exists, strange as it might sound. Why? Because Apple's hands are tied, the rate of hardware changes now and in the future has to be gradual not to hurt that apps inventory. They can not afford to redesign iPad (or introduce a new platform) if that means loosing large number of apps.
If you dig into the current crop of Android tablets, one thing is certain, these are
not "big screen Android smartphones". It boils down to the component at the hart of the platform: TI's OMAP3 family of SoC's that almost defines the Android phone, is completely different beast compared to Tegra2, the chip that dominates the Android tablet. Which is, as always, both blessing and the curse. Tegra2 packs some serious processing power, same as iPad. Unlike iPad, the device right now has a lead over Apple in the graphics subsystem. These are CUDA cores, and that technology works well for games. Not board games, fast action paced, well rendered environments. Android tablet is already shaping up to be a completely different beast when compared to iPad. Which is a blessing. What is the curse? The sharp discontinuity between Android phone world, and Android tablet. Software has to catch up not only on the bigger screen, the apps, OS, everything has to catch up on graphics eyecandy. So, it is very normal that early Andoid tablet adopters are techies. While useful devices, these Andoid tablets are still expensive to be seen as a commercial challenge to iPad, they are, in essence, a glorified development platform that is (already) useful for everyday tasks.
I am not surprised to see them failing to challenge iPad position. Those devices are paving the road for the future development, and from everything that I see, the answer will be highly asymmetric. Google, Nvidia, Asus, Acer and other names from the Android world have a staying power, sources of income that they can use to finance this war. And I don't expect them to give up like HP did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
I am pretty sure Amazon, for one, won't play that game (i.e., they won't try to be the thinnest, or brag about features). Amazon will play to their strengths - a successful digital ecosystem, a loyal userbase core (Kindle and Prime), and millions of credit cards already on file  |
I have no doubt that Amazon will make money. No doubt at all. But I do believe that Amazon will play
precisely the Apple game, and play it well. Content, hardware used to lock in. Android is on the opposite end of the spectrum by nature. The OS (and
integration) is open sourced. Forget Stallman's blabbering on very leftist view of the software and world in general, the open sourced platform is a juggernaut when it comes to its ability to minimize cost of maintenance. Users are more likely to report bugs, quite a few of them will take matters in their hands, dig into the code and supply a fix.
I am fairly certain that ChromeOS has already met his premature demise, and that Android has every chance of defining "a generic computing platform" of tomorrow.