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Does the iPad Have Competitors? No. Alternatives? No. iPadversaries? Um, ok.
I cheerfully admit that I’ve defined the term “iPadversary” loosely.
I've written about how tech pundits are itching for the iPad to have competition even as they must acknowledge it does not. Articles on the subject have taken to calling them "alternatives" instead of competitors. Now Technologizer's Harry McCracken has gone further, calling them adversaries in a clever take on the name.
I kind of like it.
This isn't a critique of McCracken's piece. Indeed, I appreciate his admission that there's really no rhyme or reason for items included in his list. If we applied some rationality, there's a number of reasonable criteria we could use to toss many of these out:
- Already on sale before the iPad? Then they've got to go, since obviously no one knew, or cared, or bought.
- Pure vapor? I don't mean "just" vapor, as most of these are, but there are some with so few details it's beyond the realm of reasonable thinking to include them on anything but a fun adversaries list.
- Android OS too old? C'mon, is it really anyone's contention that Android 1.5 or 1.6 is a viable competitor to even iOS 3.2, let alone the 4.x coming to the iPad in a month or so, especially long-term?
- And, if you really wanted to be serious, all the vapor devices would go, so 25 items drop off the list.
It seems clear McCracken is just having some fun with all the possibilities, while also providing a nice summary (as much as possible) about these devices. There are 32 of them, and one wonders how many will ever get to the mainstream market.
What's interesting is that if the iPad had even one real competitor—a device where one could make a reasonable case that a meaningful number of consumers would seriously compare the two and pick one over the other as a tablet—then none of this expanded definition of the playing field would be possible. (And the first commentor to point at some 1" thick, 3 pound netbook with the keyboard snapped off as a "real competitor" has lost the concept of the iPad entirely.)
Lacking a legitimate competitor, everyone's free to point out as contenders a number of devices in wildly varying form factors, even though we know the criteria being used is faulty at best. It makes for a fun write up, even fun reading, but can't be taken seriously.
Bottom line is that yet another article of this type serves to prove the only non-vapor and actual fact that we know: there is no iPad competitor right now.
The iPad's Competitors Drop Like Flies. Actually, They Never Even Took Off.
The iPad is the king of tablets and might hold that title for years to come. However, there are a ton of alternatives that we’ve featured over the last few months… But since [then], a lot has changed and while some managed to make it to the market, others were delayed or scrapped entirely.
Nice article describing what's happened to alleged iPad alternatives (are they called alternatives to recognize the iPad has no competitors?) in the last few months.
I've written the iPad has no "alternatives", and CrunchGear makes it's easy to see why. We can dismiss seven of them out of hand:
- ModBook - This is a MacBook reconfigured. A laptop with a desktop OS.
- Viliv X70 - A tablet with a desktop OS (XP, no less).
- Archos 9 - A tablet with a desktop OS.
- Viliv S10 Blade - A "convertibile" device. Again, a laptop with a desktop OS.
- Spring Design Alex - This is an eBook reader, what's it doing here?
- Lenovo Skylight - A netbook, not sure how it made even an exaggerated list of competitors.
- Lenovo IdeaPad U1 - Another "convertibile" that comes apart. Desktop OS as PC, and maybe Android as a tablet?
Some of these are not even available, but even if they were they're not iPad alternatives. They're not iPad tablets in any sense. It's not just about form, it needs a touch, not desktop, OS and apps. The human finger doesn't have the precision for software written for the precision of a cursor tip. A stylus can address that, but styli are a big failure, no one wants them. Why would any hardware maker (or anyone else) ignore the decade of failure "desktop tablets" have had in the market?
After weeding out the above, of the six remaining (I left the HP Slate because rumors say it won't run a desktop OS), four of them—Notion Ink Adam, HP Slate, WeTab, and ExoPC—are nowhere to be found. These devices are delayed, or maybe even killed altogether. In any case, they can hardly be called alternatives now. They're vapor, and I remain convinced the iPad will outsell vapor.
So that leaves just two devices: the enTourage eDGe dualbook, which isn't any good; and the Dell Streak, whose too-large-for-a-pocket but too-small-for-a-tablet form factor isn't winning any converts, and it's not yet available in the US.
The tech press loves for Apple to have competition, and sometimes go out of their way to invent it. In the case of the iPad, however, it simply doesn't exist. Not even close. Maybe by the end of the year, but certainly not now.
