Why Apple will keep owning the tablet market for now
Apple shall dominate the tablet market until the next new tech comes along.
This might be a bold statement coming from an apparent Apple fanboy, but lets examine some market paradigms before you dismiss my statement.
Lets start with a few reality bites that can and probably do affect Apple's position: (Note: these are not listed in any particular order.)
Now keep in mind, Apple's iPad isn't the first tablet attempt - there were plenty of other failures along the path over the years - Toshiba has had tablet PC's out for quite some time - and HP likely squandered their opportunity as well when they never made a Windows CE tablet that was either interesting or capable enough. Nobody is brave enough to try entering the OS market with anything visionary except Apple, and their vision is tempered by decades of GUI experience.
There have in fact been a vast array of tablet PC's that came before the iPad, and none of them were cool, slim or dedicated to the simple task of being hand-held and easy to use. Apple's own Newton Tablet (which I also owned long ago) was quite a kicking setup for its time, though its handwriting interface was, in my own opinion, a total failure. Being a terrible cursive writer, I was never able to tap the potential of the Newton.
Apple has certainly cleaned up however - their iPhone/iPod Touch OS, made large, has definitely proven to be a serious contender in the world of computing - and it's not often that so little can do so much.
Certainly, there's plenty of "next generation" tablets out there - the Android forces are definitely gathering for war in this marketplace, but I fear that they will ultimately fail. The reality is that the tablet war is over for now, and the next fight will not be over video conferencing or connectivity options or anything in that realm. Apple has won that war too, and the first shots of the competition are coming, and they will never be heard.
I liken the Tablet Computing Wars to the Video Game Systems wars: There can be only one winner at a time -- Until the next best thing comes along. There is always room for others.
If this is truly an extension of this kind of techno-warefare, then were in for plenty of wannabe's before the "room for others" finally gets filled with the winners circle. Remember, the video game wars had plenty of players before the market finally settled on the dominant players - and the dominant gaming console changed over time - the earliest console worth remembering was the Atari 2600, then Sega dominated for a while, then Nintendo, then Sega Genesis, then Playstation, then Nintendo again, then the PS2, then the XBox, and since then, the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii have been socking it out - as far as folks can see, there are no other consoles worth the time or effort - those 3 probably account for 99.9% of all gaming consoles.
Now that the Kinect is out, and based on the demo's I've played, I would say that it will over time dominate Microsofts position and rule the field for quite some time. Well done Microsoft! At least you did something right for a change.
As for Sony's PS3, well, the Blu-Ray player built into the PS3 still helps it enjoy a strong position, but if the movie prices remain offensively high, people will never stop buying DVD's. If Sony doesn't come up with their version of Kinect quick then they're doomed to remain in third place behind both the Wii and Xbox 360. Their "motion" solution, with those horribly stupid looking ball-ended controllers sucks - they screwed the pooch on that one - and the only saving grace for my PS3 is it's media playing abilities - but those are hampered by their self-serving content protection measures that sometimes creep up. Steaming media is killing even that functionality though - my Apple TV with Netflix has ensured that we didn't have any movies under our Christmas tree this year.
Endangering Sony's position even further is their enraging users of the PS3's "3rd party OS" support by removing it. This caused hackers to focus on breaking the PS3, and they didn't just succeed - they did something that Sony fears most - hackers cracked their master encryption key. It's now possible to pirate any software on the PS3 platform, and there's no way for Sony to know you're using illegal copies. Sony has lost all ability to protect their content on the platform, and the only way to fix this is to replace all the PS3's out there with something better, like the PS4. The real rub is that, while the PS3 did have some backwards compatibility with the PS2 games, a new PS4 can not have ANY backwards compatibility with the existing base of PS3 games because they have no way to know which games are legitimate and which are illegal copies. Had Sony not messed with things, their master key could have gone for years longer without exposure or cracking had they not pissed in the wrong people's lunches.
The Wii has dominated in it's segment - it fills in the "discount gamers" niche quite nicely - while the XBox 360 and PS3 gamers fight their holy-war to determine who's the best. It's not a media player. It's got motion, but with limits, and the games focus on group play more than most - and these are big pluses in a world that is increasing isolated by FPS gamer heads - and those segments are filled with XBox and PS3 players anyway.
In the world of tablet computing, we've now reached our first Atari 2600 moment. There's a dominant product in the space - and that product, like the 2600, has dominated the space and defined it. There will be plenty of also-rans, but only one iPad for the foreseeable future. Just like the 2600 dominated during its time - there were alternatives, but they really never had the traction to take over until they hit the "next level". We'll see this trend in tablets too I think - there will be some cool stuff coming, and it will all be Android based, but the field may be filled with plenty of options that just don't seem to take over the top slot from Apple, because they just won't be that far ahead.
I think there will be a time where the iPad is surpassed by someone else's tech, but what puts that tech ahead of the iPad cannot be quantified at this time - we don't know what it will be yet. It's Apple's job to find out what that is, help refine it, and make sure that they're the one's selling it to us - and if they fail at that job then they'll loose the pole position in this field - for a time anyway.
Google is banking on cloud integration, and that may hold true for many things - but then, Apple is also working similar angles. I personally see the education market being the next big corner of the tablet world - my daughter seems to be enamored with the iPad, but her locking brains with Backyardigans on Netflix will only hold out for so long - she likes playing with the educational apps I download on it - and I see her eventually having my iPad and my moving into an Apple Macbook Air 13". I'd love to see a real-world version of Neal Stephensons of the Young Womens Primer from The Diamond Age come to the iPad.
This might be a bold statement coming from an apparent Apple fanboy, but lets examine some market paradigms before you dismiss my statement.
Lets start with a few reality bites that can and probably do affect Apple's position: (Note: these are not listed in any particular order.)
- Apple's "our way or the highway" approach to Apps has made enemies in some development circles.
- Apple acts like a sort of gestapo when it comes to what apps are allowed.
- The tech of the iPad isn't remarkable.
- No camera, no video conferencing.
- It's very expensive, bordering on over priced.
- Lack of, or at best, weak, multi-tasking capabilities.
- It's a giant iPod.
Each of these points has been discussed at length online, and as much as I'd like to present my own re-hashes of these points, I'm going to refrain this;
They're all correct.
They're all correct.
For each of the items listed, a google search on that subject will return you 100's of links discussing that very point - enough crap that I could write 7 entire blog entries, one each for each subject. If you're reading this, then you've likely ready all of that crap already - just like I have.
Note: The fanboys who read this will probably yell blaspheme and point at me like the Evil Monkey if they see me on the street. I can deal with that.
One other thing that I can say for each of those items is that I don't agree with all of them - or perhaps, depending on my own personal rationalizations, I should rather state this:
Don't entirely blame Apple, they're necessary evils - and it's our fault.
Please bear in mind that someone with something to protect can't simply ignore their rules - one bad apple ruins everything for everyone. Don't believe me? How many of you will buy Android apps from Bob's Hack Store using a credit card?
Despite the hoopla, sales say otherwise - people are buying iPad's like crazy, and not knowing the actual retail numbers - I can say that every major retailer I visited was out of stock on all the iPad's they had this season - trips through Target and Walmart showed me empty cases - devoid even of demo units, during the last week before Christmas. Enough that Acer, and probably all the other retailers, are already bitching about lower than estimated PC sales during the 2010 holiday buying season.
Regardless of the Apple's and the iPad's shortcomings, of which there are many, its wide array of applications and its broad appeal are spelling out a marketing and product success that will last for years, defining the standard for tablet computers for some time to come.Now keep in mind, Apple's iPad isn't the first tablet attempt - there were plenty of other failures along the path over the years - Toshiba has had tablet PC's out for quite some time - and HP likely squandered their opportunity as well when they never made a Windows CE tablet that was either interesting or capable enough. Nobody is brave enough to try entering the OS market with anything visionary except Apple, and their vision is tempered by decades of GUI experience.
There have in fact been a vast array of tablet PC's that came before the iPad, and none of them were cool, slim or dedicated to the simple task of being hand-held and easy to use. Apple's own Newton Tablet (which I also owned long ago) was quite a kicking setup for its time, though its handwriting interface was, in my own opinion, a total failure. Being a terrible cursive writer, I was never able to tap the potential of the Newton.
Apple has certainly cleaned up however - their iPhone/iPod Touch OS, made large, has definitely proven to be a serious contender in the world of computing - and it's not often that so little can do so much.
Certainly, there's plenty of "next generation" tablets out there - the Android forces are definitely gathering for war in this marketplace, but I fear that they will ultimately fail. The reality is that the tablet war is over for now, and the next fight will not be over video conferencing or connectivity options or anything in that realm. Apple has won that war too, and the first shots of the competition are coming, and they will never be heard.
I liken the Tablet Computing Wars to the Video Game Systems wars: There can be only one winner at a time -- Until the next best thing comes along. There is always room for others.
If this is truly an extension of this kind of techno-warefare, then were in for plenty of wannabe's before the "room for others" finally gets filled with the winners circle. Remember, the video game wars had plenty of players before the market finally settled on the dominant players - and the dominant gaming console changed over time - the earliest console worth remembering was the Atari 2600, then Sega dominated for a while, then Nintendo, then Sega Genesis, then Playstation, then Nintendo again, then the PS2, then the XBox, and since then, the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii have been socking it out - as far as folks can see, there are no other consoles worth the time or effort - those 3 probably account for 99.9% of all gaming consoles.
Now that the Kinect is out, and based on the demo's I've played, I would say that it will over time dominate Microsofts position and rule the field for quite some time. Well done Microsoft! At least you did something right for a change.
As for Sony's PS3, well, the Blu-Ray player built into the PS3 still helps it enjoy a strong position, but if the movie prices remain offensively high, people will never stop buying DVD's. If Sony doesn't come up with their version of Kinect quick then they're doomed to remain in third place behind both the Wii and Xbox 360. Their "motion" solution, with those horribly stupid looking ball-ended controllers sucks - they screwed the pooch on that one - and the only saving grace for my PS3 is it's media playing abilities - but those are hampered by their self-serving content protection measures that sometimes creep up. Steaming media is killing even that functionality though - my Apple TV with Netflix has ensured that we didn't have any movies under our Christmas tree this year.
Endangering Sony's position even further is their enraging users of the PS3's "3rd party OS" support by removing it. This caused hackers to focus on breaking the PS3, and they didn't just succeed - they did something that Sony fears most - hackers cracked their master encryption key. It's now possible to pirate any software on the PS3 platform, and there's no way for Sony to know you're using illegal copies. Sony has lost all ability to protect their content on the platform, and the only way to fix this is to replace all the PS3's out there with something better, like the PS4. The real rub is that, while the PS3 did have some backwards compatibility with the PS2 games, a new PS4 can not have ANY backwards compatibility with the existing base of PS3 games because they have no way to know which games are legitimate and which are illegal copies. Had Sony not messed with things, their master key could have gone for years longer without exposure or cracking had they not pissed in the wrong people's lunches.
The Wii has dominated in it's segment - it fills in the "discount gamers" niche quite nicely - while the XBox 360 and PS3 gamers fight their holy-war to determine who's the best. It's not a media player. It's got motion, but with limits, and the games focus on group play more than most - and these are big pluses in a world that is increasing isolated by FPS gamer heads - and those segments are filled with XBox and PS3 players anyway.
In the world of tablet computing, we've now reached our first Atari 2600 moment. There's a dominant product in the space - and that product, like the 2600, has dominated the space and defined it. There will be plenty of also-rans, but only one iPad for the foreseeable future. Just like the 2600 dominated during its time - there were alternatives, but they really never had the traction to take over until they hit the "next level". We'll see this trend in tablets too I think - there will be some cool stuff coming, and it will all be Android based, but the field may be filled with plenty of options that just don't seem to take over the top slot from Apple, because they just won't be that far ahead.
I think there will be a time where the iPad is surpassed by someone else's tech, but what puts that tech ahead of the iPad cannot be quantified at this time - we don't know what it will be yet. It's Apple's job to find out what that is, help refine it, and make sure that they're the one's selling it to us - and if they fail at that job then they'll loose the pole position in this field - for a time anyway.
Google is banking on cloud integration, and that may hold true for many things - but then, Apple is also working similar angles. I personally see the education market being the next big corner of the tablet world - my daughter seems to be enamored with the iPad, but her locking brains with Backyardigans on Netflix will only hold out for so long - she likes playing with the educational apps I download on it - and I see her eventually having my iPad and my moving into an Apple Macbook Air 13". I'd love to see a real-world version of Neal Stephensons of the Young Womens Primer from The Diamond Age come to the iPad.
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