Why Can’t Tablet Makers Just Freaking Ship?

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/17/why-cant-tablet-makers-just-freaking-ship/

by solipsist • 15 years ago

128 98 15 years ago

muhfuhkuh2• 15 years ago

Because it's really hard to make a market-reactive product that is more powerful and featureful than the preceding product it is catching up to clone.

Apple just happened to have caught the entire planet with it's pants down when they introduced the i-Devices. I mean, look at what Google was working on[1] after Apple introduced the original iPhone. Google was chasing the market leader in style and interface at the time (Blackberry). When Apple introduced iPhone 3G, all bets were off and Google went back to the drawing board.

iPod Touch is introduced, and the only real competitor that comes to the fore is Microsoft, with the Zune (RIP) brand that mimics the Touch to no end and barely does anything better (yes, I'm taking the soon-to-be-dead Zune Pass into account).

Now it's tablets, and again, the rest of the industry reacts. I'm certainly surprised MS hasn't tried to hook up with a HW vendor to make a Phone 7 tablet.

Apple is on a hot streak. First with seriously consumer-friendly smartphones, then with software and media ecosystems, now with disruptive computing platforms.

It'll eventually run out of steam, but will the rest of the industry kill itself trying to keep up in the meantime?

[1] http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html

martythemaniak5• 15 years ago

Beyond a superficial "touchable screen", most of Apple's tablet competitors have been heavily influenced WebOS - watch the PlayBook and TouchPad in action and you'll see navigation and multitasking are almost identical, as is the gestures used to control the device (swiping a card up to close the app). Meanwhile, the guy behind WebOS is the same guy behind Honeycomb, which also borrows the task manager and (don't know which came first) notifications.

blinkingled3• 15 years ago

But it just isn't cool to say the tablet makers are copying webOS or have their own guts (Android notification system, while nothing like webOS is still distinct and lot better designed for example) - people just love being told that everything interesting in the universe is copied from Apple :)

checoivan• 15 years ago

Agree. It's harder than it seems.

There's tons of things to consider with hardware related products. Imagine all the conditions: from software, to users, people with disabilities, hardware conditions, if it heats up, if the environment is too humid, too cold, if it gets dropped, and so on.

This things take time. If a tablet pops up today it doesn't mean it was built in 3 months by a handfull of hackers and redbull, there's tons of work behind. Apple just happend to execute really, really well on it.

sudont2• 15 years ago

This is marketing 101: create an original position, a USP. [1] What's going on now, is a bunch of suits and managers who want to ride on Jobs' coattails and build me-too products for a market they don't actually understand one bit.

The fervor over subscriptions should be a key to these idiots that there is a strong market for an actually open device: instead they're taking the main competitor, an open source project even, and making it functionally more closed than iOS to an average user. Apple is hammering away at the middle-road consumer, and Google's OS is not only positioned as "me too, but also everything!", it's being filtered through handset manufacturers who have their own agendas, which run counter to what Android suggests to be.

My suggestion? Google builds a durable tablet for academics and scientists to research in the field with. Because of Android's open nature, it would be trivial to open up an entire ecosystem of sensors and data loggers that would integrate. The best gift I ever got for my father was a kill-a-watt, there's a huge, untapped consumer market for data collection and processing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing)#Product...

silvestrov• 15 years ago

Because of Android's open nature, it would be trivial to open up an entire ecosystem of sensors and data loggers that would integrate

I think it would be easy for Apple to match this: they can just add a USB host port to the iPad and allow apps to talk to connected devices. Almost everything today is USB-based.

Apple just does a little step at a time instead of completely opening the barn door as the first step.

Anechoic2• 15 years ago

> Google builds a durable tablet for academics and scientists to research in the field with. Because of Android's open nature, it would be trivial to open up an entire ecosystem of sensors and data loggers that would integrate.

Apple has kinda done this via the dock connector. For example I just bought one of these to turn my iPod touch into a sound level meter: http://www.studiosixdigital.com/iphone_measurement_micropho....

The bad news is that it's not compatible with the iPad or newest iPhone/iPod touch so possibly Apple is removing the external interface capability.

edit: there are also ODBII interfaces although I don't know if they work with the newest iDevices

greyman• 15 years ago

I am also surprised why MS at least doesn't talk about WP7 tablet. Nobody wants Win7 tablet with desktop software, so the only option left is that Win8 will natively support tablets, but then, what about apps?

protomyth2• 15 years ago

I think WP7 has one big problem for apps, unlike iOS and Android, it doesn't do OpenGL ES. I think this is going to make it an issue to port.

pixcavator2• 15 years ago

I have HP Slate. It's "Win7 tablet with desktop software" which is exactly what I wanted.

contextfree• 15 years ago

After resetting Windows Mobile development they had their hands full just getting WP7 out on phones, and it's still missing features like a decent web browser which are already pretty bad on a phone but would be crippling on a tablet. It would probably take them another year to do a reasonable port, at which point it's not that far from the release of Windows 8 anyway.

GrandMasterBirt• 15 years ago

When apple announced the iPad, it was near completion. Thats why it shipped soon. There was no pre-ipad were gonna make it but wont ship it till 5 yrs later release. That is the benefit of being first.

gaius• 15 years ago

Windows XP Tablet Edition shipped in 2001.

mturmon• 15 years ago

Also, remember this good observation in the OP:

"Apple has the tablet component market sewn up. An entrepreneur I talked to in China described the difficulty he still has buying touchscreens that are worth a darn. The real reason most of the current tablets are 7 inches? Because Apple bought up all of the 10-inch capacitive touchscreen stock and if they didn’t then they drove the price too high for smaller orders. There is no way to dabble in the market without paying a premium."

tghw• 15 years ago

Somewhat ironic commentary considering they were just as unable to ship the CrunchPad. And what did ship (the JooJoo) got completely panned in the reviews.

Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not.

taylorbuley• 15 years ago

Right on. Seems like polishing the prototype isn't the only hard part. Operations/supply/etc. are not trivial processes.

whakojacko4• 15 years ago

"Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not."

More than just that, Apple also has the considerable advantage of owning almost all of their stack. They make their own chips to power their hardware which runs their OS which uses their applications and their infrastructure. Apple has aggressively taken control of the entire top to bottom stack (eg App Store reviews, acquiring PA Semi) like nobody else has been willing and/or able to.

martythemaniak5• 15 years ago

Samsung makes their processor.

MaysonL• 15 years ago

They don't own their whole stack, but they do control it - especially the critical stuff - to a larger extent than other verndors. They've done this by making large bets on component manufacturers: first on flash memory, now on displays or touchscreens (or both).

rje• 15 years ago

But shouldn't companies like Motorola, Samsung, Palm, et al have those resources at their disposal? They are consumer electronics companies, after all.

mburns2• 15 years ago

Sony is almost exactly 1/10th the size of Apple (in terms of Market Cap). Don't underestimate just how much weight Apple is throwing around these days.

Sonly also doesn't fab their own processors for mobile devices like Apple now does.

muhfuhkuh2• 15 years ago

They are big, no doubt. But they aren't as innovative as they once were. Palm is HP now, and HP is squarely in the commodity hardware business. You can't outstyle a boutique marketing haute couture when you sell K-mart seconds.

I mean, even Nokia had to capitulate to stay competitive in the smartphone market, ceding control to a not-even-second-place Phone 7 software stack with an app store ecosystem that literally has to bribe hot developers to port over their stuff let alone have a fiercely competitive market like App Store or Android Marketplace.

joebananas• 15 years ago

Well, I wonder how much Samsung actually cares. There are no high-tech devices that already isn't chock-a-block full of their components, and they're crazy profitable.

msbarnett• 15 years ago

Palm let their original OS stagnate while pumping out iterations of their phone hardware. Moto mostly stuck with iterating hardware models. Samsung seems to have split their software and hardware people into competing groups.

There's a general lack of focus or apparent belief that their core competencies should only include one (1) of hardware or software among most consumer electronics brands, it seems. And a lot of timidity regarding innovating something new that cannibalizes your sales of some older thing.

protomyth2• 15 years ago

How many companies have the whole chain and cash assets to pre-pay > 1 billion USD in components?

rahoulb2• 15 years ago

The real shift that started with the iPhone was that the software became as important as the hardware - how they work together [1].

Motorola, Samsung, Nokia et al don't have the extensive software culture.

Palm/HP is the only one that does.

[1] Also a weakness with Android phone manufacturers - my phone has a small screen, making the icons just too small to hit accurately - Apple would never let a device like that leave the building, Samsung are quite happy to and Google are OK with having their name slapped on the back of it.

EDIT: forgot about formatting

ardit33• 15 years ago

From first hand experience, it takes up two years to ship a new product that is of a decent quality. Assuming a lot of the hardware OEM started working on a tablet device around second half of 2009 when the iPad rumors started, then the later half of 2011 is when the tablets will start shipping.

It just not that simple as slaping few components together, put some software on top and you are done.

My guess on the age of engaget, or "i build an web app in two weeks" posts, people expect that manufactures can come with great new devices overnight.

Also when you are working with hardware you have to consider supply chain capacity, component quality, etc.

Hardware is just a lot harder to build and harder to scale(and maybe thats why PG advocates startups to steer away from it as much as they can).

wmeredith• 15 years ago

That's fine and dandy, but quit showing mock-ups and talking about how great they are going to be and how they're going to change your life and all the other heavy breathing. Wait until it ships.

achompas• 15 years ago

Also when you are working with hardware you have to consider supply chain capacity, component quality, etc.

You have to wonder how component supplies will be affected by Apple's orders. I hear they're responsible for 60% of all display orders right now [0], and they also have the famously secretive "component agreement" they announced during their last earnings call. It's possible that non-Apple product shipments will be delayed out to 2012 as a result.

[0] http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/17/with_60_of_wor...

martythemaniak5• 15 years ago

Why can't the blogoechochamber just fucking relax? It's been less than a year since the iPad launched, tablets haven't made it to most people's radars yet and the market will play out over the next 5-10 years.

In the grand scheme of things, who actually cares whether the Xoom ships on Feb 17 or gets "delayed" to Feb 22, or that RIM announced March availability for the PlayBook and will instead ship it in April?

neworbit2• 15 years ago

Oh gawd yes. There seems to be some conception that Apple has nailed it with the iPad and competition is impossible. Gang, the devices we're going to be able to get in three years will make today's iPad look as useful as a brushed-metal frisbee. There's a lot of innovation left to come.

rimantas• 15 years ago

iPhone was announced four years ago. In that time a lot of innovation had to come. Well, we got iPad, from Apple…

vacri• 15 years ago

Simple: consumers live in the moment. They have no idea how much work goes into creating a product, nor do they see more than a couple of months into the future.

martythemaniak5• 15 years ago

Yes, so if a consumer wants a tablet now they'll get an iPad. If they want one for the holidays, they'll have 4 different OSs and 10s (if not 100s by then) of individual tablets to choose from. Unlike some tech bloggers, consumers don't get aneurysms because RIM delayed shipments by 3 weeks.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

Sadly for every company that isn't Apple, Wall Street works in the exact same way.

nl2• 15 years ago

Because it fucking matters.

Look at the education market:

Right now schools are signing up to give iPads to their students, and text book companies are beginning to ship their text books as iPad apps. Not as HTML5 apps, or both Android & iOS apps, but exclusively on iPads.

The same thing is happening in any industry you can name, and the nature of these things means once a platform gets a lead it's pretty hard to catch.

Personally, I don't want the iPad to be the Windows of the next decade, with every other platform relegated to quasi-supported status like the Mac was in the 1990s.

The only way to stop that happening is for other manufactures to ship credible products in numbers large enough that software companies cannot ignore them.

aphexairlines• 15 years ago

Because we grew up with HP, Compaq, Gateway, Dell, Alienware, IBM, and a hundred others "just shipping" a truckload of PC models all the time without 2-year marketing cycles. Seemed like every week you would get a new PC magazine showing a bunch of new builds with better specs and lower prices than the previous week that you could order immediately.

This brave new world of embedded devices sucks.

mburns2• 15 years ago

The problem of designing and manufacturing a new product is harder than you think.

tesseract• 15 years ago

The problem of sourcing components and getting them delivered in a timely fashion is harder than you think. Especially on the heels of a global recession that caused suppliers to cut back on their manufacturing output.

sambeau3• 15 years ago

I suspect this has something to do with it, too:

"Apple secures 60% of global touch panel capacity, causing tight supply"

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110216PD219.html

jasongullickson• 15 years ago

What are you waiting for?

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Seriously though, what is so compelling about the non-shipping tablets that makes them worth waiting for (or complaining about) than what Apple is already shipping?

Aside from the arguments that don't impact most consumers (jailbreaking, etc.) could it be that it's just not in the cards at the moment to come out with a device that competes with the iPad (price, performance, whatever, pick your metric)?

tomjen32• 15 years ago

I want a tablet with flash that I can also use as an USB drive.

Neither of those things are stuff that doesn't impact consumers.

rayiner2• 15 years ago

You want to use a $500 tablet as a $20 flash drive? And carry a USB cable that'll take up more space in aforementioned $20 flash drive?

That is really one of the problems with Apples' competitors - they just don't get the use cases.

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

iOS is merely an iteration of a platform that's been under development for over 20 years.

It took Microsoft over 10 years to create a consumer-friendly version of Windows NT, and almost another 10 years to deliver an acceptable followup.

Software is hard. Consumer software much harder. Platforms take years and years to develop and mature.

Bitmobrich• 15 years ago

So when is the CrunchPad being shipped?

cletus• 15 years ago

There are several reasons:

1. It takes time to develop the supply chain, product design and so forth;

2. Apple completely caught the industry with its pants down, creating a market where previously there was none where the consensus seemed to be that tablets were niche products;

3. Apple's competitors are constantly chasing last year's Apple product. It's why it's a huge mistake (IMHO) for competitors to draw attention to the iPad: at some point very shortly there will be a newer better iPad and suddenly they won't want to make those comparisons anymore (at least not for awhile);

4. These companies generally have absolutely no understanding of the markets they're entering. It's what I call the Cargo Cult School of Product Management; and

5. Whereas Apple went all-in with the iPad into unknown waters, every other suppliers seems to not believe in their product. It's a typical business strategy: test the waters, don't overcommit.

The problem is that Apple's "overcommitment" helped bring the price down.

yuhong• 15 years ago

"These companies generally have absolutely no understanding of the markets they're entering. It's what I call the Cargo Cult School of Product Management; " Yea, I mentioned the myth that a MBA can manage everything before.

shimi• 15 years ago

A year ago I had a gig for a big name prototyping an Android tablet. The message that was passed from other vendors was that Goggle were that they aren't looking into tablets. The project was cancelled. How wrong they were...

When Android 1.0 was released a lot of vendors approached it with caution, 2 years down the road same story again...

FiddlerClamp• 15 years ago

The smaller names are already shipping - I got an Archos 70 and 101 this week (after weeks of delay for the 101, mind you). The Viewsonic G-Tab and Huawei Ideos are out there, too.

I think that Honeycomb introduced a lot of uncertainty into requirements. When would it be ready and would the shipping product be able to support it? Would Gingerbread be sufficient?

nl2• 15 years ago

Hey, that's what I said: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215290:

Ever wonder why it's taken a year for anyone to build a 9"/10" iPad competitor? It's because no one can get capacitative touch screen in sufficient quantities. Even Samsung (which owns the factory!) had to make do with 7" screens. Now, finally new factories are beginning to come online, which means that competitors can release their products. The problem for them is that Apple locked in much lower prices (because of their bigger purchasing power), which makes it hard to compete on price.

mjfern• 15 years ago

> First, Apple has the tablet component market sewn up. An entrepreneur I talked to in China described the difficulty he still has buying touchscreens that are worth a darn. The real reason most of the current tablets are 7 inches? Because Apple bought up all of the 10-inch capacitive touchscreen stock and if they didn’t then they drove the price too high for smaller orders. There is no way to dabble in the market without paying a premium.

Most people attribute Apple’s stunning financial performance to its differentiated products, which integrate excellent hardware, software, and content. If you dig deeper, however, you realize that other critical factors have played a substantial role in Apple’s financial performance over the last decade.

One factor rarely discussed in detail, but that has significant impact on Apple’s success, is the way in which the company manages the critical forces within its industry. There are five key industry forces, according to Michael E. Porter, but here I just want to focus on one force: “the bargaining power of suppliers.”

Let’s start with the iPod and iPhone. Most iPod’s except for the “Classic,” rely on flash memory -- instead of a hard drive -- for storage. The benefits of flash memory are reliability, form factor, and energy consumption. Realizing the significant benefits of flash memory for portable media devices, Apple formed long-term relationships with Samsung, Intel, and Micron, and by mid-2007 commanded about 25% of worldwide flash production.

Fast forward to today, and we are seeing a similar scenario unfold for the iPad and the tablet market. It turns out that Apple has secured about 60% of global touch panel capacity, with a focus on 10-inch displays. As mentioned in the article, this has forced some competitors to initially focus on devices with 7-inch screens, such as Samsung with its Galaxy Tab.

What’s the effect of commanding such a large portion of the worldwide supply of a key component for a product?

First, because Apple is buying these components in such large quantities it can exercise significant leverage over suppliers. This leverage enables Apple to negotiate favorable terms and pricing. For instance, South Korean Fair Trade officials alleged that Apple struck a special deal with Samsung to obtain flash chips at below market rates. This favorable pricing means that Apple has a lower cost structure for its products relative to competing products. And all else equal, this lower cost structure results in higher margins for Apple versus a competitor.

Second, when Apple commands such a large portion of the global market for a key component it creates enormous barriers to entry for potential competitors. Competitors can obtain the component in limited quantities but at a higher price, therefore placing the competitor at a cost disadvantage. Next, the competitor can launch a different product -- a hard drive based portable media device or a 7-inch touch screen tablet – that may not match the preferences of consumers. Alternatively, the competitor can just sit and wait until more supply of the component is made available, which in some cases takes years.

In sum, Apple’s financial success as a company hinges in part on commercializing differentiated products. But this is just part of the story. As important to Apple’s success is the company’s strategy around managing key industry forces. As described above, Apple’s control over the worldwide market for key components has reduced Apple’s cost structure and has created significant barriers to entry for competitors. This yields significantly higher margins and market share for Apple, among other benefits.

angstrom2• 15 years ago

So, they're a "high-end Wal-Mart".

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

I don't think that is quite accurate. Walmart is all about optimizing the the process of going from supplier to customer (reducing inventory help, optimizing shipping routes, etc). Apple is about controlling access to the suppliers.

nika2• 15 years ago

"when Apple commands such a large portion of the global market for a key component it creates enormous barriers to entry for potential competitors. "

This is true, but it also creates enormous opportunity for potential suppliers of the component that apple has secured.

Apple's operating here to ensure they are able to meet their own internal demand. They have a lot of difficulty doing this, as was acknowledged in the last conference call. This means that they lose out on sales they would have otherwise made.

Over time, the component industry grows capacity to support Apple and everyone else. This does take time and is a competitive advantage for apple in the short term. But it is not sustainable. Meanwhile the long term pricing contracts on critical components is a financial (rather than supply) advantage.

But note that the barriers to entry are only for competitors creating a derivative product.

If HP or any of these other companies had spent the last 10 years working on a tablet design, they would have likely made different choices than Apple and likely arranged for a different spec components. It is only because they want to quickly ship a replication of the iPad that they are going after 10 inch displays.

If they'd developed their own touch UI and their own ergonomics they would have their own specs and thus be seeking different components.

majorlazer• 15 years ago

I may have misunderstood your first point but one of the primary reasons Apple is purchasing so many screens is to purposefully reduce the amount of components on the market to block out competitors from reaching demand.

Yaggo• 15 years ago

Is the number of LCD panel manufacturers limited by some universal constant or why Apple's competitors just don't build their own factories?

johnthedebs• 15 years ago

Building and maintaining factories is really expensive, and a major distraction (they need to be continually updated to stay relevant). It's only worthwhile if you can guarantee you'll sell most/all of the factories' production potentials. AMD recently spun off its fabrication side for just this reason.

masklinn3• 15 years ago

> Is the number of LCD panel manufacturers limited by some universal constant

It's limited by the ability to forecast the future as well as the costs (in money and time) to build a new panels factory and ramp up its production.

> or why Apple's competitors just don't build their own factories?

Because most of them have no core competency in manufacturing, because manufacturing is expensive to setup and evolve, because manufacturing is hard and because manufacturing does not mean you'll make money (one part of Apple's come-back strategy was to get rid of all its manufacturing capacity, a plan executed by Tim Cook)

danssig2• 15 years ago

Walmart works the exact same way. But instead of pulling this "squeeze play" on a few components they do it on most things they sell.

guelo2• 15 years ago

One problem is that Google is too tight-lipped about the Android roadmap even with its manufacturing partners. I know from working with one manufacturer how surprised they were with the pace of the Gingerbread and Honeycomb releases and how this has completely screwed up their schedule.

ReadyNSet• 15 years ago

Well didn't you look at Samsung? They did ship and what was the result..

navan• 15 years ago

There are many cheap 5" and 7" tablets. But very few 10" tablets. ViewSonic gTablet or viewpad10, Archos 101. They all have pretty good hardware with many of them with two cameras and comparable price with low end iPad. Processor manufacturers like nVidia gives them good frameworks to start with. In addition to several things mentioned in the comments, these tablets had problems like,

1. Almost all except Samsung Galaxy lacked direct use of Android market. 2. Some had software problems with bad out of box experience. (For example: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/18/viewsonic-g-tablet-pulled...) 3. Regular apps built for Android phones did not give good experience on the tablets

For the future tablets, waiting for Android 3.0 may not be a good reason. They always can release the hardware and then update the software later. HTC flyer is following this approach. There is a risk of users turning away if the first impressions are really bad. Announced prices for several of them are on the very expensive side. Among the announcements I also notice that very few come with wifi only option which is another reason for high price.

I collect tablet information at tbltpc.com.

TGJ• 15 years ago

Wow, what's with the comments section in the article showing like 5 copies of each post?

epynonymous• 15 years ago

because nobody wants to re-create microsoft's mis-steps and it's clear that tablets are entering mobile territory.

Why Can’t Tablet Makers Just Freaking Ship?

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