There isn't really much of a tablet market

http://www.marco.org/2546655554

by yewweitan • 16 years ago

40 72 16 years ago

the main argument against tablets (bad software that actively interferes with usability) is going away. The market for tablets that are basically just laptops with a different form factor remains what it was before the ipad: small. the market for a tablet that is easy to hop on the couch with and surf for casual content is huge.

joeguilmette9• 16 years ago

80-90% of computer users never leave the browser. The tablet will take over. Everything except power users will be using tablets in 5 years.

Xuzz7• 16 years ago

Assuming you count iTunes and Microsoft Office as part of the browser, which isn't really that much of a stretch. (However, he iTunes Store is a browser (possibly still using their proprietary/strange markup language), and for many (if not most) tasks Google Docs or Microsoft's offering is good enough.)

ugh3• 16 years ago

That seems a bit too optimistic (pessimistic?) to me. I would predict that more than two-thirds of households will have a tablet in five years. I can see tablets replacing kitchen or living room laptops that have become so common in the last years, I can’t see them replacing the office PC, at least not in five years. PCs (~ $800) and tablets (~ $500) are cheap enough to co-exist. I don’t think it was that long ago when you paid $1300 for one desktop PC.

axod5• 16 years ago

80-90% of websites use keyboard as an input mechanism.

I'm not seeing why a tablet is so massively better than a netbook/laptop.

samstokes• 16 years ago

I assume you (reasonably) count webmail as "not leaving the browser". Typing emails (or Facebook messages or whatever) is much more pleasant on a real keyboard than on a virtual touch-screen keyboard. Seems unlikely people are going to give up typing in droves.

What does seem quite plausible is tablet + peripherals - the tablet basically assuming the role of the old mini-tower computer, angled upright on a stand for desktop use, with keyboard and mouse hanging off it. (In fact if you also hung a monitor off it there's no reason you couldn't do that with a regular phone.) I think tablet + dock + keyboard may well become a popular home computer setup in the next few years.

Xuzz7• 16 years ago

(Unless you claim that Android is "bad software that actively interferes with usability" (because it doesn't officially support tablets yet, or has custom skins, or isn't integrated, or whatever), which the author seems to be, in a sense, saying. I'm not sure if I agree or not.)

joeguilmette9• 16 years ago

I would say that while popular, Android on the whole is 'bad software' the same way Windows is. Doesn't mean it wont dominate the market.

proee• 16 years ago

The nook from B&N is recently reported as their new best-selling product. So I'd say that the non-iPad tablets are quickly gaining momentum.

Would like to see some data backing up the author's claims.

Bud2• 16 years ago

The Nook is a reader, not a full-featured tablet. Apples and oranges.

rlmw2• 16 years ago

I don't know which nook he is referring to, but the Nook Color is an Android tablet basically with their e-reader software installed. Its not quite as clear cut as all that.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

If you count the Nook Color, I know more people that got Nook Color than iPads for XMas. Nook Colors were crazy sellers from what I can see anecdotally.

estacado• 16 years ago

The tablet market is too young to be regarded as miniscule. Software-wise, we have only started to think about touch input seriously. There still so much that can be done.

Bud2• 16 years ago

This strikes me as the right answer. We're not really sure yet. What if you can do input via brainwave headsets at 100 wpm in 5 years? Not impossible; you can type via brainwaves, right now.

Tablets could become nearly magical in less than a decade.

ggruschow• 16 years ago

There were tablets on the market before Macs.

zephyrfalcon2• 16 years ago

Well, no, there isn't really much of a tablet market. It's an emerging market; a year ago it didn't even exist until the iPad single-handedly created it. Everybody else is still trying to catch up. Right now your choices are basically, an iPad, or something else that probably isn't nowhere near as good (unless you count Kindles and Nooks which are much more specialized devices).

However, in a few years or so, I can totally see casual users ditching their (in their eyes) complicated PCs and netbooks in favor of a tablet of some kind, as long as it does what they want (watch a video, send email, go on Facebook, listen to music, play a game, etc).

Pewpewarrows6• 16 years ago

The iPad popularized the Tablet market, it didn't create it. Tablets have existed since 2000.

jawee3• 16 years ago

Although not a tablet in the current sense, I´ve been happily using my Maemo-powered ¨Internet Tablet¨ since before Apple made touchscreens.

zephyrfalcon2• 16 years ago

Technically yes, but they were all considered failures. I recall that before it became clear what Apple was making (somewhere late 2009), there was a lot of speculation along the lines of, "well it can't possibly be a tablet PC, because nobody has ever had success with that".

foljs5• 16 years ago

Creating a market equals popularizing it.

A market of 10 people is not much of a market at all.

jawee3• 16 years ago

I know about five (non-techies) that got Nook Colors and a few people that got Tabs (3 to be exact). It´s probably partially because of the stronghold Verizon holds in my area so AT&T isn´t worth it... there is literally no AT&T service within a 10 mile radius of my house and school. I only know one person who got an iPad; well someone that posted on Facebook. I´m not sure I get the original argument.

jamesk2• 16 years ago

I know many more people who have Kindles or iPads and nobody who own a Nook or a Tab... I live in the SF Bay Area but still, it's an oddly different market where you are... where are you?

jawee3• 16 years ago

I am in a suburb a good ways south of Atlanta, Georgia. Apple seems to have a relatively low market in general in my immediate vicinity except for iPods.

blinkingled8• 16 years ago

Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. With implausible or otherwise manufactured/subjective beliefs sometimes sprinkled in there to make them feel like logical reasons. There isn't anything insightful there - just bigotry.

"Neither Google nor Microsoft will ever be able to tailor their software to other manufacturers’ specific (and varied) hardware devices as well as Apple can (and does) with theirs."

Really? Marco Arment can predict the future? Do we lose all hope that people will do anything better than Apple? Even in Marco's little part of the world it sounds outrageously short sighted. You can say what you want against everything non-Apple and that would of course be your opinion (as opposed to universally accepted truth) - but this is going too far, even for Marco Arment class of people.

He goes preaching about Apple's integrated experience, "superior everything" and ponies - but you know what the whole world is not buying the iPad universally - Samsung sold a million Galaxy Tabs, Androids are already outselling Apple worldwide and reason for that is not that the people buying them are stupid - people just have different needs and tastes. Banging on the "teh superior AAPL drum" with a sad tune of everyone else's suckiness for ever is not going to change that.

foljs5• 16 years ago

"""Marco Arment, John Gruber and company are so obnoxiously biased against anything that is not Apple that it isn't worth clicking on any links pointing to their sites. It's deja vu all the times if you do - no one can compete with Apple, everyone other than Apple is doomed. Ad-nauseum. """

I know how you feel.

And the most annoying thing is how they always come out right: first the renaissance of Apple and the Mac, the iPod, then iTunes, then the iPhone, then the App Store now the iPad.

All of these getting great sales, redefining industry, and gathering higher market share, while tens of competitors sink or at best manage to offer knock-offs a couple of years later.

Why don't Gruber and company write more like enlightened pundits like Paul Thurrot, Rob Enderle and John Dvorak?

blinkingled8• 16 years ago

Yep - Microsoft has closed shop, Android is not selling at all, Amazon hasn't continued to gain more music selling share, no one is buying Kindles as there is the iPad. And Adobe was going to be in serious trouble too - http://mosspuppet.com/2010/12/21/clearly-adobes-in-real-trou... . I get it yes - for my non-reasoned definition of right I can be always right. Doesn't mean much though.

Oh yeah and market share is not the success criteria - I know that as well. What I "feel" is the criteria.

ZeroGravitas2• 16 years ago

I've been surprised by the number of times I've seen the Galaxy Tab listed on best tech of 2010 lists. Often by people who also own iPads.

I've not had a chance to play with one myself (though I've held one in my hand, turned off) but since some (but not all) of the early reviews were particularly scathing, this seems a bit odd to me.

I think the possibilities are a) Android fanboys lying about the Tab and how good it is b) Apple fanboys lying about the Tab and how bad it is, c) that, for some people, with certain needs the Galaxy Tab is already better than Apple's iPad, due to size, weight, hotspot capabilities, built in cameras, network availability or whatever and that the things that Arment and Gruber value aren't universal values.

blinkingled8• 16 years ago

I actually wondered about the mixed Tab reviews too. Andy Ihnatko's review gave me a clue - the Apple fan reviewers who compared the Tab against iPad almost invariably did not like it. But those who looked at it independent of the iPad, like Ihnatko does in this review - http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2680861-452/tab-i... - liked it ( a lot in Andy's case).

Bottom line my take is that it is a good device in its own right and the price over iPad is at least somewhat justified given the additions of 2 cameras, more RAM, SD Card, better GPU etc. and the 7" size is definitely a good one.

rlmw2• 16 years ago

Allegedly Samsung have sold 1 million Tabs within 2 months of putting it on sale. [0] This isn't as fast as the ipad, but it does demonstrate that there's a market for non-ipad tablets. One of the things thats quite important in this market is that Android 3 is meant to be rather tablet oriented, and I think that will address his concerns. There certainly are a lot of cheap, poor quality, android tablets on the market at the moment but if you look at the Android phone market it also went this way. Initially people thought it would be loads of cheap asian cloners and it turned out that the best selling android phones were actually the high quality devices.

Now I don't want to start some 'Android vs iOS' discussion, buy whatever product suits your taste - thats your choice, but I do think its a little bit hasty to write off tablets from other manufacturers at this moment in time. Perhaps I've misunderstood and he is only talking about the present - but it seems like the author thinks there will never be a serious competitor.

[0] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199678/Update_Galaxy...

mboyle• 16 years ago

Have actual consumers purchased a million galaxy tabs or is some portion of that million unit figure inventory that carriers have purchased but not necessarily sold to end users?

blinkingled8• 16 years ago

Actually sold - http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/samsung-sells-one-million...

Pewpewarrows6• 16 years ago

Apple sold a bit more than 4 million iPads the most recent quarter that they released sales reports for.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab has sold well over 1 million this past quarter thus far. The Android OS also does not officially support Tablets until the upcoming Honeycomb release.

By that comparison there isn't a PC market either. Macs certainly aren't even close to selling at a rate of one-third of the Windows machines right now.

There isn't really much of a tablet market

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