An editorial on iPad sales and competition

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

To watch netflix in bed.

that's kinda legit. I do that with my laptop, though. Bathroom netflix, I'll give ya.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Smartphones don't have 7~10" displays.

True, but that's good for what? Those extra few inches of real estate do not suddenly make the experience cinematic. It mostly just becomes too big to fit in your pocket, yet too small to do anything well.

Just imo, and I'm taking a wild guess that most consumers feel the same at this point. Or at least enough to make non-iPad tabs fail.

[stonetools]

True, but that's good for what? Those extra few inches of real estate do not suddenly make the experience cinematic. It mostly just becomes too big to fit in your pocket, yet too small to do anything well.

THose few inches really do matter for doing visual things. An Ipad screen has twice the real estate of a 7'" Galaxy TAB and about 8 times the area of an Iphone screen. That's a helluvalot more space.
WAtching a movie on an Ipad screen is a pleasant experience, if not cinematic. Its a pain in the eyeballs on an Iphone screen.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

I suspect that the non-iPad tablet will go down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of consumer tech. I could be super wrong.

Sales of obscure game consoles vs. non-iPad tablets

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Apple can sell their expensive products to them.

The mainstream doesn't find them expensive, and saying so 1000000000 times won't change that.

They cost more than the cheaply made tablets with inferior parts and washed out screens, but that doesn't make them expensive.

[stonetools]

Good article on the failure of non-Ipad tablets:

Consumers aren’t buying devices for their potential. I’d argue that for most people, the iPad is the most complete tablet solution available. Why? Out of the box at launch it had strong third-party app support, as well as backward compatibility with phone apps, a media store, and an operating system interface that tens of millions were already used to. It took more than a year before the first tablet contenders even appeared, and they’re still just now gaining some key features: movie stores, stretch and zoom capabilities for phone apps, for example. Consumers want a complete tablet experience, not one that’s “coming soon.”

http://gigaom.com/mobile/tablet-timi...of-the-market/

[tubemonkey]

Consumers want a complete tablet experience, not one that’s “coming soon.”

Something Amazon will provide when it launches its tablet.

[karunaji]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

The mainstream doesn't find them expensive, and saying so 1000000000 times won't change that.

Which mainstream? If you are talking about the US middle class with a lot of disposable income then yes. But try to sell it to those who don't have that kind of money in the pocket. Suddenly the less expensive models will be selling much better.

Even Amazon found that lower Kindle prices means more devices sold.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Which mainstream? If you are talking about the US upper middle class with a lot of disposable income then yes.

Unfortunately, middle class isn't what it used to be...

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Which mainstream?

The mainstream.

[petermillard]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Something Amazon will provide when it launches its tablet.

Yes, though it may be worth noting that one of the major chunks of the Amazon ecosystem ( the App Store) is US-only at the moment, which perhaps doesn't bode well for us 'international' amazon fans.<shrug>

[OtterBooks]

I recently used an EVO 3D (smartphone) for a few days. Thing was impressive. At 4.3" it was possibly too big for a phone, imo, but honestly it made a tablet seem redundant. The screen was gorgeous. Interface was fast and fluid. Video looked great. Games looked great. News articles and such were not too small at all at 4.3".

...and it fit in my pocket. For me, 7" is no more portable than 12" or 14". Either one requires my messenger bag. Once it stops fitting in my pocket it is no longer truly portable, in the same sense.

That said: I don't need digital content strapped to my face 24/7. It's okay for me not to have access to my email and weather widgets while on the toilet. It's okay to walk from one room to the next without a multimedia device in my hand.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

...and it fit in my pocket. For me, 7" is no more portable than 12" or 14". Either one requires my messenger bag. Once it stops fitting in my pocket it is no longer truly portable, in the same sense.

The 7" screen always looked to me like a perfect replacement for the dedicated GPS device (the one that is not built into the car, of course).

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Which mainstream? If you are talking about the US middle class with a lot of disposable income then yes. But try to sell it to those who don't have that kind of money in the pocket. Suddenly the less expensive models will be selling much better.

Even Amazon found that lower Kindle prices means more devices sold.

" Too expensive" always refers to that useless gizmo that the idiot over there with too much money was misled to buy through clever marketing. MY expensive gadget is , on the other hand, an essential productivity tool that I only purchased after careful thought.
Most people here love smartphones, but there is an engineer I know who thinks they are a waste of money. A cheap dumbphone is all he needs. I know another engineer who doesn't even own a TV set. He has a dozen old cars, though. Further, I have an architect friend who owns a desktop, 2 laptops, a Blackberry, annd several Ipods who dismisses the Ipad as a toy. And of course, there are countless folks who jeer at the idea of buying an ebook reader in order to read books. As always, "expensive" and "essential" are in the eye of the beholder.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by stonetools

there is an engineer I know who thinks they are a waste of money. A cheap dumbphone is all he needs.

Actually, I've given some thought to switching from an iphone to a dumbphone/ipod combo. Here in The Big City there are so many free wifi spots around that paying the ATT iphone surcharge seems a bit of an extravagance. Gotta run out the contract, though...

[Dillinquent]

<rant>I've got an iPad and have yet to find a use for it that isn't better served by some other piece of kit.

As an ebook reader its too heavy, the display is too low rez, it does that silly page flip thing, is difficult to see in bright lighting conditions (mainly due to the shiny, fingerprint smeared screen) and is generally tiring to read. Not to mention that it doesn't support any known ebook format properly and is a pig to code for.

As a media viewer it lacks a DVD/Blu ray drive and doesn't have a TV tuner.

As a computing device the display is too small, it doesn't multitask, has minimal storage, won't run any proper software, is underpowered in the CPU department and doesn't have a keyboard.

It would be ok for casual web surfing if it ran Chrome and had a better display.

As a music player its just too cumbersome. It would be ok if it played CDs, apart from the DAC being rubbish that is.

The only reason I've got one is so that I can fudge my epubs to render properly on the thing - 'cos that's what customers want.

I guess what I'm saying is that tablets are pretty useless in the real world and everyone knows that.

The only reason iPad sells is that its made by Apple - there millions of gullible punters out there that will buy whatever Apple tells them to. Apple could sell bags of poo if they called it iPoo. </rant>