Already trimming the corner of irrelevance, Android tablets are at danger of being entirely inundated by Apple's new iPad.
The many successful "pure" Android inscription line, Samsung's endless Milky Way Tab series, binds a mild worldwide inscription marketplace share of about 6 percent - and this is opposite 4 not similar Milky Way form factors. Amazon and Barnes Noble are carrying out partially improved with their tablets, but these gadgets aren't branded as Android products. Instead, Google's working network simply runs in the background, providing OS encouragement for Amazon and BN wrappers.
To date, inscription manufacturers that blatantly commemorate the Android name - regard Samsung, Sony and Asus - have touted hardware superiority. In other words, if you wish 4G information speeds, cutting-edge CPUs, and higher displays, you'll have to come together Team Android. Or so the story has been told.
But right away with the attainment of the new iPad , well-stocked with fully modernized specs that vacate the hardware advantages of the biggest, snazziest Android tablets, it's all the more strong that Google's inscription plan is more exposed than ever before.
One researcher even released an baleful proclamation: "Android has no hope as a ‘branded' inscription OS in the U.S.," Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps told Wired .
So how can Google and friends make a convincing box for customers to select Android tablets over the iPad? Here are 3 avenues that Google might ponder to keep Android tablets - or at least a few of them - alive and kicking.
At this point, it's glaringly without doubt that Apple has the high finish of the inscription marketplace cornered. At $500 is to lowest-priced new iPad and up to $830 is to tip of the line model, it takes more than chump change to collect one up.
And nonetheless early sales estimates uncover that Apple's new iPad is already a outrageous success. The Verge reported Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store sole 13,000 iPads in the initial 12 hours of the tablet's release. Apple itself has settled that pre-order urge before the tablet's entrance was " off the charts, " with more than 3 million new iPads sole in the initial week end of the device's release.
Needless to say, people are peaceful to bombard out leading immature for Apple's new slate.
Android inscription makers are pulling similar high-end models, but alas, buyers aren't flocking to the devices. Google stumbled right out of the embankment with the Motorola Xoom, that was labelled at $600 is to cheapest chronicle - a hundred bucks more costly than the cheapest iPad. The Xoom, together with large other high-end Android tablets, have not sole well.
But Amazon seems to have found the right approach: If you can't beat ‘em, undercut ‘em.
Amazon's Kindle Fire went on sale final November, rapidly securing a mark as one of Amazon's fastest-selling products ever. The pull to consumers hasn't been tender specs and features, as the Fire is a small 7-inch device that doesn't add any cameras, and offers paltry on-board storage. Nor have apps been a Kindle Fire draw, as Amazon's Appstore offers a small fragment of apps compared to Apple's veritably endless buffet.
No, for Amazon, it's all about the price. The Fire launched with a loss-leading $200 cost label - significantly descend than the $400 to $500 cost tags of branded, 10-inch Android tablets. And the Fire has shattered its Android brethren in conditions of marketplace share, capturing 16 percent of the still nascent inscription landscape, and selling more units in a matter of weeks than other manufacturers managed to sell over the march of a year.
Google may be examination carefully, and reevaluating its options in the arise of Amazon's success. Last week, rumors circulated around a $150 Android inscription that would be made by Asus and offer as Google's next Nexus device.
Nexus devices, of course, are shut collaborative efforts between Google and an associate manufacturer. In the past, they've always emerged as flagship smartphones that uncover off all the bells and whistles of a new chronicle of Android. If Google can spike its next Android program iteration on a Nexus inscription (as against to a smartphone), it could remonstrate consumers that Google takes tablets seriously.
"To favour more pile allure for Android as an OS, there should probably be more synergy between the OS (or the content) and the hardware," NPD researcher Benjamin Arnold told Wired in an email. "The Nook and Fire were successful for a number of reasons, a leading one being the calm was firmly aligned with the device."
There's nothing worse than feeling left out. Sadly, until Google can do a improved work of convincing app developers to ethics for Android first, it will be hard for Android inscription users to feel they're using the latest, greatest, coolest software.
Take Instagram. It's one of the hottest iOS-exclusive apps to strike the stage to date, currently braggadocio an commissioned bottom of shut to 30 million users globally . It's a breakaway success, with little pointer of slowing. Yes, Instagram is forthcoming to Android soon, CEO Kevin Systrom says . But after how long and how many Android users' pleas?
"Google could unequivocally lend a assisting palm to developers and work with them to obtain the many out of what the stage has to offer," Andreas Schobel, CTO of cross-platform note-taking mobile app Catch, told Wired . "It's all about the apps."
Industry players have attempted to lend Google a assisting palm in propping up the Android app effort. NVidia boasts the Tegra Zone app inside the Google Play store; it basically acts as a portal to Nvidia's own cache of games optimized is to Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 CPUs. And wireless carriers have moreover attempted luring developers with their own branded app markets, such as Verizon's V-Cast App store and ATT's App Center.
But Google doesn't need a engorgement of fragmented Android app stores to stir up customers. These various outlets can simply emanate confusion, carrying out more damages than good.
What Google needs to do is steal a pretence from Apple, and make Google Play - it's just-launched bid to combine apps, music, video and books - in to a square of remunerative actual estate. Being featured on Apple's App Store promises a hefty speed up in downloads , so if Google can send millions of eyeballs to its Google Play storefront - similar to Apple has completed with iTunes - developers will free-for-all to obtain on Google's radar.
For even more power, Google needs the one-two punch of anticipating the next hired gun app, and featuring it on the ultimate Android tablet. "You obtain one of these releases to coexist with a big hardware release, and that would unquestionably obtain consumers thinking," says NPD's Arnold. "Maybe a special let go of an Angry Birds ."
How does Google find the next Angry Birds ? It needs to put a full-court press on the developer community, enchanting devs and promoting most appropriate practices. Google has already taken a few first move here - partnering with MIT to emanate improved collection for developers, rising the Android Design web site to more categorically speak most appropriate coding practices , and even starting a array of Android university classes around the world to enroll more programmers in to Google's third-party developer ranks. But there's always more to be done.
Kenny Rogers mentioned it most appropriate : "You got to know when to grip ‘em, and know when to overlay ‘em." So maybe it's time for Google to travel away (or even run) from Android tablets. Android tablets with a funds "A," that is.
"Android may be successful as an underlying stage for companies similar to Amazon and Barnes Noble in the US, but not as a branded platform," Forrester researcher Sarah Rotman Epps told Wired . Instead, she says, original apparatus manufacturers similar to Toshiba, Dell and HTC will adopt a Microsoft-based plan, pulling out Windows-based slates when Windows 8 at last drops this year.
Could Android do well sufficient for Google as a back-end stage that supports Amazon's and Barnes and Noble's law user interfaces? Google's hunting engine is still the default is to Fire's Silk browser, together with Barnes and Noble's Nook, that means Google still creates ad income on all those served queries. Does it matter, then, that Android is probably unrecognizable on the tablets?
As ample as it may harry hard-at-work Googlers accountable for Android's looks, the answer is probably no. Ceding the high finish of the inscription marketplace to concentrate on low-end gadgets similar to the Fire and the Nook creates a established amount of sense. Yes, you'll give other OEMs an chance to burst in to bed with Microsoft, but there's no explanation that the Redmond hulk has the chops to take on iOS in inscription form.
Doubling down on cheap, already renouned tablets by devoting more resources to getting Fire and Nook-ready apps in the marketplace could pay off in the long run. Devoting the rest of the company's efforts to phones and the Google Play market, and you've got the makings of a robust Android ecosystem.
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