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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.
Palm: "Hey! We're still here! Look at us!" (*waving arms*)
Starting June 18th and ending on July 9th, the promotion will slash the price on every paid app in the App Catalog by 50%.
Palm is subsidizing the promotion, making up the difference so developers still get full price.
It's a fine idea, but with major developers like Adobe currently (and predictably) telling Palm to get lost, surely others will follow. This is just a stop-gap measure similar to the bargain-basement prices on the Palm handsets themselves. At best, it provides temporary relief and a press release, but it's no fix. The patient is still bleeding. If Palm (i.e., webOS) is to survive, HP must come out with a competitive device to show its worth.
HP CEO: Our purchase of Palm doesn't mean what you think it means.
We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well.
It's like that old retort after someone states an obvious move: "No… that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."
Ha ha! HP just fooled us all.
I've said that I believe HP wanted an OS of their own for their mobile strategy. They saw the coming rise of mobiles, knew Microsoft couldn't help them there, and wanted something to fuel their new devices. To me it was obvious this meant more than smartphones, but it was equally obvious it included smartphones.
This does not bode well for HP's strategic thinking, so I'll close by simply reminding you again…
All I'm saying is that HP made a deal to sell the iPod—
perhaps the most successful product of the last few decades—and managed to screw it up. What chance does Palm have?
HP webOS tablet rumored for this Fall
An insider at HP tells us that a webOS tablet under the code name HP Hurricane could be released the third quarter of this year.
I thought it would be nearly a year before HP could get a webOS tablet on the market. This rumor may be BS, but if true could mean a few things:
- They're rushing something to market because of Apple's huge lead, and won't let Apple have the holiday season to themselves. This would be a huge mistake, and one I think HP is smart enough to avoid.
- They're dreaming, and the date is half prayer, half vapor. They won't make the date, but some people may hang on and wait to see what HP's "iPad killer" can do.
- They've had an ARM-based tablet in the works for a while (for Android?), and they're simply shifting it to a webOS machine.
HP had talked of various tablets, so the last item is not out of the realm of possibility. I hope for HP's sake that's what it is. A device rushed to market would be a disaster, and the public is not likely to give them a second chance.
iPad killers take a time-out
Looking back, I guess I gave the competition too much credit. It was a silly thing to do, and I promise it won’t happen again.
I haven't seen HP confirm that the Slate is dead, but it makes no difference for this article. A decade of failure means the Slate will be dead out of the gate anyway.
I'm impressed that HP is taking action to truly get in the tablet game. Now that they have webOS, they should definitely kill the Slate. They need to focus on getting a tablet with webOS ready, and that's likely to take a year. They don't need the distraction of a failure in the marketplace to slow them down and tarnish their webOS offering.
HP wants an OS to call their own
[HP bought Palm] For a number of very good reasons… but one above all: H-P wants its own operating system. And by acquiring Palm that’s exactly what it’s getting. The steady refrain during my conversation with HP execs this afternoon, “We’re very excited about webOS … We see great potential in webOS … We’re going to double down on webOS.”
HP spent this decade racing Dell to the bottom on pricing and squeezing margins. They "won", but at a cost of not making anything like the quality hardware they used to. This is what comes from everyone using the same OS, so you can only differentiate on price. Now mobile platforms are the new frontier, yet there's HP's upcoming slate, running an "optimized" Windows 7, like everyone else. And, like everyone else, it will fail.
I really think HP wanted a differentiator in the mobile space more than anything else. Android isn't it, that's what everyone else will run to, so they'll have to differentiate on price. It's déjà vu, and HP wants no part of that.
I like the idea, applaud HP's effort, and wish them luck. Whether they can pull it of remains to be seen. They'll need to adopt webOS for a tablet ASAP. I don't think they can make holiday season this year, next Spring seems more realistic. A year is a long time in this business, but when you've got nothing…
Meanwhile, Microsoft can't be happy. They want their desktop-OS-shoehorned-with-a-few-touch-features on everyone's tablet and slate devices. HP clearly doesn't want to play that game. Not on mobile devices anyway. Make no mistake, this purchase hurts Microsoft. Windows 7 is no good for tablets, and Windows Phone 7 is just too far off. Once WP7 is available, why would HP use it? They have their own OS now, and I think that was their plan all along.
HP Slate is 'meh'
[Conecti.ca's] conclusion? "The official verdict is meh." Yeah, ouch. Apparently the Slate's biggest strength is also its greatest weakness -- it's essentially a touchscreen netbook, and that means that while it can run everything including Flash, it can be "slow and annoying.
Can this possibly be a surprise to anyone not in denial? These doofus Windows tablet devices are netbooks with the keyboard snapped off. Using a desktop OS not only too bloated to run well on their relatively slow processors, but unable to fully realize the experience of a touch UI.
The old ones sucked. The new ones suck. Future ones are gonna suck.
Bill Gates said you can't just build a new OS for tablets, but he was wrong. It was wrong about tablets eight years ago, and it's still wrong today. It's actually sad to see a company like HP follow a path that a decade of devices has proved time and again is... wrong.
Adobe: For a Great Flash Experience on Tablets, Get One That Doesn't Exist
Mind you, not one of those companies is (as yet) selling a competing tablet, and it's not like there's some magical formula that will make 720p Flash video run smoothly on a bare Atom CPU (remember, Ion GPU acceleration is not yet available for the Linux-based JooJoo), but who are we to stand in the way of a carefully worded damage limitation statement?
As if Adobe's management hasn't been misguided enough -- putting the survival of Flash above all other priorities -- their PR group has lost it, too.
