An editorial on iPad sales and competition

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

@GlennD
Aren't all of those things that you can use your iPhone for? Why carry the ipad around for taking pictures?

You CAN use your iPhone for reading and watching TV, in the same way you CAN use your laptop for making phone calls. The question is, Would you want to?
I agree with you about using the Ipad as a camera, though. Of course, he may just not hava an Iphone.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

@GlennD
Aren't all of those things that you can use your iPhone for? Why carry the ipad around for taking pictures?

I could probably use my phone, although some of the cards are small enough that it would be hard to read. Then again, I could also use a pencil and paper. I carry the ipad when I plan to use it because it's convenient. Also, I have an iphone 3G that I made the mistake of keeping current on the OS - it's slower than molasses in winter. We've been holding out on renewing our AT&T contracts and getting new phones - waiting for the iphone 5 release.

[RDaneel54]

As an Apple product user, I am not a "fan" as so often defined in any kind of tech forum.

I bought my iPod Touch 4 years ago and use it every day as a super portable game machine, web browser and e-reader (when I don't carry my Kindle 3). Only (minor) issue is that I need to charge it almost every day.

My other is a 5 year old iPod Nano. I use it for podcasts and music in my car every day.

Both great products that are sturdy, well made, and still interface well with iTunes.

Not the latest and greatest. And I would hardly throw them away for something new unless I wanted to, and not because of marketing.

Not interested in the iPad at all as it is not what I need. More power to those who like it. It looks like a handy device.

[hidari]

RockdaMan, KJK, and Sil_liS: How much did your Apple Tattoo Cost?

[RockdaMan]

$499, but that was the refurbished model.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by hidari

RockdaMan, KJK, and Sil_liS: How much did your Apple Tattoo Cost?

Just a friendly discussion about an company that is a minor player in the eBook world. No reason to get personal or insulting about it.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by kjk

Just a friendly discussion about an company that is a minor player in the eBook world. No reason to get personal or insulting about it.

I think sometimes that people have a different view of what 'friendly' means. Just ignore those who don't want the friendly discussion: The experience is so much better without them.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Frankly, only geeks care that much about things like SD cards, Flash, USB ports, etc. What mattered to the average consumer was that from day one there were lots of apps, games, and content that they could enjoy on the iPad . Since then, Apple's ecosystem for the iPad has only gotten much better.

Not only geeks care about SD cards, USB ports, and flash. Especially flash - there's lots of people that want to watch videos on flash-driven sites.

There are video sites besides Youtube, you know. And I know plenty of people that take digital pictures with a REAL camera (not a phone camera) that would love to be able to easily dump them onto a tablet and upload them to facebook, especially on vacation and such. The camera-kit thing is ridiculous.

And USB? There's a ton of commercial use for a tablet with a USB port, just to start - it matters to the corporate community. And again with SD cards - people do like expandability, if it's as easy as popping a big fat SD card in.

People said the same stuff about Android phones and how they would never make inroads against iPhones, because all people cared about was super-simple ease of use, and didn't care about this other "geek stuff", and where are we now with that?

There are 100,000 apps in the App Store for the iPad, versus 1000 or so from Android and only a few hundred for the Touchpad and the Playbook.
There are thousands of games for the iPad. Indeed, the iPad is rapidly becoming the number one gaming device, at the expense of consoles.
There is all that great content from the iTunes store and third party apps like Netflix and HBO

A completely deceptive number.
Unlike painfully up-rezzed Ipad apps, Android apps almost always scale fine at bigger screen resolutions - that's what happens when you have to design for multiple resolution phones. And in case you haven't noticed, HBO GO and Netflix are available on Android.

On my CM7 NC, there's only a few places I could use a multi-paned "tablet" Android app - Gmail, for example - and most of those are being provided by google.



I do agree with some of the others on this, though - Amazon is perfectly placed to take a big hunk of this market, with their Android appstore, music/video store, etc. Even my wife, who loves her ipad, said she'd consider an Amazon android tablet - because she loves Amazon and their services and already uses their music store - and she loves her Kindle.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I skipped the second page because I know the two sides are just going to constantly go back and forth over the same points again and again. I am a self-loathing Apple user (iphone) and I would love for Android to have a huge surge this year. I think we can all agree that no matter what happens this year, Apple's share will shrink and Android's will increase. That's the only possible direction to move when you go from having no competition to a lot of competition. I held off buying a tablet this summer because I didn't want the "upgrade" that was iPad 2 and I felt that the Android devices (Samsung and Asus) and the Android store weren't just quite there yet. But I think after another year they'll be a lot better off.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

A completely deceptive number.
Unlike painfully up-rezzed Ipad apps,

I think that that is the number of native iPad apps.

HBO GO and Netflix are available on Android.

...finally.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

I think we can all agree that no matter what happens this year, Apple's share will shrink and Android's will increase. That's the only possible direction to move when you go from having no competition to a lot of competition.

...agreed. And it would be even better if the number of Android tablet apps increased too.

Exclusives to Honeycomb/Ice Cream would be even better.

[GlennD]

Regardless of which platform you prefer, competition is good for all of us.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by GlennD

Regardless of which platform you prefer, competition is good for all of us.

Agreed.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

It won't matter who's got a tablet to sell, or how good it is, if they don't market it. In order to compete with the iPad, it will have to become as well-known as the iPad to the average consumer. Otherwise, it'll remain a geek toy (Zune, anyone?).

I've seen a ton of ads for Xoom and Galaxy Tab, so it's not like they're keeping it a secret.

And people ARE buying them; apple just has a head start and a good platform / market to build on.

Of course if you do like HP and freaking quit after a month, you're not going to get anywhere.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Barty

I've seen a ton of ads for Xoom and Galaxy Tab, so it's not like they're keeping it a secret.

And people ARE buying them; apple just has a head start and a good platform / market to build on.

Of course if you do like HP and freaking quit after a month, you're not going to get anywhere.

Whats worse, plunging money in for uncertain results, or saving it for a day and place where you can use that money to play to your strengths?