CES 2011 was a blast. It was also, however, deeply repetitive of last year and perhaps a bit disappointing, at least in terms of the new technologies shown. The most impressive items were not high-volume consumer products but either hardware, such as the Intel Sandybridge and AMD Fusion chips, or niche concepts, such as Razer’s motion controller for the PC. Although cool, these technologies were not really CES announcements, but rather technologies that have been in concept and widely known about by hardware enthusiasts for months, even years.
Tablets were no different. In fact, tablets were the case-in-point. Ever since the iPad hit the scene in 2010, tech journalists have been eagerly awaiting iPad killers to emerge. There was reason to believe they could be just around the corner, because tablets were dominated the press a year ago at CES 2010. Yet news of tablets mostly told a store of delays – the Samsung Galaxy Tab was the only significant iPad competitor released.
The iPad killers were finally unveiled at CES 2011. Blackberry, Motorola, Samsung, Dell, ASUS, Lenovo, Toshiba and others unveiled products that were either tablets, convertible PC tablets, or both. At first glance, it appears that the iPad killers have arrived. Certainly, that’s the impression you’d be left with if you weren’t actually at CES. But not so fast!
While many products were shown, the problems with them were often significant. The Motorola tablet is cool and all – hell, it won some best-of-show awards – but it’s unclear what it does better than the iPad. The same goes for Blackberry’s tablet, ASUS’s tablet, and etc.
Here’s the other catch – most of these products don’t even have a release date set. After spending a year of waiting, it’s rather hard to take these tablets seriously until we at least have an indication of what month they’ll show up in. To be fair, there are some exceptions, most notably the Xoom, which is supposed to come out on the 17th of February. However, many other tablets remain in limbo.
Yet the Xoom’s recently announced release details drive home one final point against the iPad killers – price. A Xoom with 32GB of storage is expected to sell for $700, and the 3GB version will be $729. The standard iPad, by comparison, comes in at $599, with the 3G version ringing up at an identical $729. The Samsung Galaxy Tab didn’t have much of a price advantage, either. If this becomes a trend, the iPad killers are dead themselves before they’ve even started. Apple is a luxury brand, and buyers are going to expect any other device from any other company to undercut Apple, even if technical details are identical.
Given these problems, it’s hard to take the iPad killers seriously. If the new tablets entering the market often an inferior user experience, at the same price as the iPad, a year later than the iPad, why would anyone buy these tablets? The answer; they won’t.
I know some might point to the cell phone market as proof that Android and other mobile operating systems can foster devices competitive to iOS in terms of market share. I think this is a poor conclusion. Remember, the iPhone has until now been restricted to one carrier, and that carrier doesn’t have the best reputation. Apple’s iPad service also goes through AT&T, but the catch is that the AT&T contracts are not long-term. In other words, people can buy an iPad because the want an iPad and deal with the service later. Those who want an iPhone, however, have up until now had to worry about the service before the phone. Of course, we’ll know soon enough just how true this theory is, since the iPhone will be hitting Verizon in February.
With all of this said, I do admit that I am talking about the North American market, and this market alone. Android’s global market share growth has been strong, and for good reason. Google’s open approach makes it far easier to convert Android into a usable operating system for any market in the world, while Apple has to make a coordinated effort to do so. It would not surprise me if the iPad is dominated in the global tablet sales race over the next few years. Here in the North American market, however, I see little hope for the iPad killers.
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