Michal Ždanský The iPad is one of Apple's most successful products ever. In 2010, it caught all consumer electronics manufacturers by surprise and immediately gained a monopoly position on the market, to this day it still hasn't been subdued. Why?
We have already heard many tales about iPad killers. However, they still remained fairy tales. When the iPad entered the market, it created its own segment. The tablets that existed until now were non-ergonomic and contained at most Windows 7, which are only remotely adapted for finger control. While many manufacturers were looking for a portability compromise in netbooks, Apple brought a tablet.
But I would not like to discuss here how Apple caught everyone by surprise, that is not what this discussion is about. However, Apple started from a very good position, over 90% of the tablet market in 2010 was theirs. The year 2011 came, which was supposed to be the dawn of competition, but the revolution did not take place. Manufacturers had to wait for an acceptable operating system, and that became Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Only Samsung tried it with the old version of Android intended for phones and thus created the seven-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. However, it did not bring him great success.
It's now 2012 and Apple still controls nearly 58% of the market and counting last quarter sold over 11 million units. Tablets that have reduced its share are primarily Kindle Fire and HP TouchPad. However, their marketability was mainly influenced by the price, both devices were eventually sold for a price close to the factory price, namely under 200 dollars. I don't know a guaranteed recipe for a successful tablet, but I can still see a few things that Apple gracefully excels at while the competition fumbles for a way out. Let's go through them step by step.
Display aspect ratio
4:3 vs. 16:9/16:10, that's what's going on here. When the first iPad came out, I wondered why it didn't get a similar aspect ratio to the iPhone, or rather I didn't understand why it wasn't widescreen. When watching videos, less than two-thirds of the image will remain, the rest will be just black bars. Yes, for video a widescreen makes sense, for video and… what else? Ah, here the list slowly ends. This is unfortunately what other manufacturers and Google do not realize.
Google prefers widescreen displays to the classic 4:3 ratio, and manufacturers follow suit. And while this ratio is better for videos, it's more of a disadvantage for everything else. First, let's take it from the point of view of ergonomics. The user can hold the iPad with one hand without any problems, other wide-screen tablets will at least break your hand. The distribution of the weight is completely different and completely unsuitable for holding the tablet. The 4:3 format is much more natural in the hand, evoking the feeling of holding a magazine or book.
Let's look at it from a software perspective. When using portrait, you suddenly have a hard-to-use noodle, which is not really suitable for reading or using applications in this orientation. While developers can relatively easily optimize their iPad software for both orientations, since the vertical and horizontal space doesn't change so radically, it's a nightmare for widescreen displays. It's great to see right away on the main Android screen with widgets. If you turn the screen upside down, they will start to overlap. I'd rather not even talk about typing on the keyboard in this orientation.
But lying down - that's no honey either. A rather thick bar takes up the bottom bar, which cannot be hidden, and when it appears on the keyboard screen, there is not much space left on the display. Widescreen displays on laptops are important when working with multiple windows, on tablets, where one application fills the entire screen, the importance of the 16:10 ratio is lost.
More about iOS device displays <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>
Application
Probably no other mobile operating system has such a base of third-party developers as iOS. There is hardly an application that you would not find in the App Store, along with several other competing efforts. At the same time, many applications are at a high level, both in terms of user-friendliness, functionality and graphic processing.
Soon after the launch of the iPad, versions of applications for the tablet's large display began to appear, and Apple itself contributed its own iWork office suite and iBooks book reader. A year after the launch of the first iPad, there were already tens of thousands of apps, and most of the popular iPhone apps got their tablet versions. In addition, Apple threw the excellent Garageband and iMovie into the pot.
A year after its launch, Android has approximately 200 (!) applications in its market. Although interesting titles can be found among them, the quantity and quality of applications cannot be compared to the competing App Store. Applications designed for phones can be stretched to fill the display space, but their controls are designed for phones and their use on a tablet is not user-friendly to say the least. In addition, you won't even find out in the Android Market which applications are intended for the tablet.
At the same time, it is precisely the applications that make these devices tools for work and fun. Google itself - its own platform - did not contribute much. For example, there is no official Google+ client for tablets. You won't find a suitable optimized application for other Google services either. Instead, Google creates HTML5 applications that are compatible with other tablets, but the behavior of the applications is far from the comfort of native ones.
Competing platforms are no better. RIM's PlayBook didn't even have an email client at launch. The manufacturer of the Blackberry phone naively thought that its users would prefer to use their phone and, if necessary, connect the devices. It also failed to attract enough developers and the tablet became a flop compared to the competition. For now, RIM is pinning its hopes on a new version of the operating system (and a new executive director) that will at least bring the coveted email client. To make up for the lack of apps for its own system, the company has at least created an emulator that can run Android apps.
Prices
Although Apple has always been known for its relatively high prices, it has set the price of the iPad aggressively low, where you can get the lowest 16GB model without 3G for $499. Thanks to the large production volumes, Apple can obtain individual components at a lower price than the competition, moreover, it often reserves strategic components only for itself, as it does, for example, in the case of iPad displays. The competition thus produces devices at a higher price and has to settle for inferior components, because the better ones are simply not available in the required volume.
One of the first competitors was supposed to be a tablet Motorola Xoom, whose starting price was set at $800. Despite all the arguments that were supposed to justify the price, it did not impress customers much. After all, why should they buy an "experiment" for $800 when they can have a proven product with tons of applications for $300 cheaper. Even the other tablets that followed could not compete with the iPad due to their price.
The only one who dared to radically lower the price was Amazon, whose new Kindle Fire was valued at $199. But Amazon has a somewhat different strategy. It sells the tablet below production costs and intends to offset revenue from content sales, which is Amazon's core business. In addition, the Kindle Fire is not a full-fledged tablet, the operating system is a modified Android 2.3 designed for mobile phones, on top of which the graphics superstructure runs. Although the device can be rooted and loaded with Android 3.0 and above, the performance of the hardware reader certainly does not guarantee smooth operation.
The opposite extreme is HP TouchPad. The promising WebOS in the hands of HP was a fiasco and the company decided to get rid of it. The TouchPad didn't sell well, so HP got rid of it, offering the remaining devices for $100 and $150. Suddenly, the TouchPad became the second best-selling tablet on the market. But with an operating system that HP buried, which is a rather ironic situation.
ecosystem
The success of the iPad is not only the device itself and the available applications, but also the ecosystem around it. Apple has been building this ecosystem for several years, starting with the iTunes Store and ending with the iCloud service. You have great software for easy content synchronization (although iTunes is a pain on Windows), a free sync and backup service (iCloud), cloud music for a small fee, a multimedia content and app store, a book store, and a publishing platform digital magazines.
But Google has quite a lot to offer. It has the full range of Google Apps, music store, cloud music and more. Unfortunately, many of the legs of these efforts are rather experimental in nature and lack user simplicity and clarity. Blackberry has its own BIS and BES network, which provides Internet services, e-mail and encrypted messages through BlackBerry Messanger, but that's where the ecosystem ends.
Amazon, on the other hand, is going its own way, thanks to a large portfolio of digital content, without ties to the Google ecosystem, including Android. It will be interesting to see how and whether Microsoft mixes up the cards with its Windows 8. The new Windows for tablets is supposed to be functionally at the level of a desktop operating system and at the same time be user-friendly, similar to Windows Phone 7.5 with the Metro graphical interface.
There are many points of view from which to look at the success of the iPad compared to others. The last example is the corporate sphere and the sphere of public services, where the iPad has no competition. Whether it is for use in hospitals (abroad), in aviation or in schools, to which the new introduced digital textbooks.
In order to reverse the current situation where Apple dominates the tablet market with its iPad, manufacturers and Google, which is the creator of practically the only competitive operating system for tablets, would have to rethink their philosophy of this market. The new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will not help the situation of competing tablets in any way, although it will unify the system for phones and tablets.
Of course, it is not only the above-mentioned things that separate other manufacturers from dethroning Apple from the position of number one among tablets. There are many other factors, perhaps more on them another time.
Excellent article. I got the Galaxy Tab at work and returned it to them the next day. I had exactly the same complaints as in the article + one of my own: I'm too old to use complicated devices.
Really nice article. Thumbs up
maybe I would just align the text in the block, but that's a small thing :)
THE ANSWER TO SUCCESS IS:
The best possible OS
Application
Top processing
Display quality
Battery
What nobody cares about (yet) is iCloud, unfortunately.
Great article…
I use an iPad 2 and it has gradually replaced my laptop in most situations. 4:3 is a really good number, iCloud works well, iTunes match without any problem. Good application for sFTP contact, remote control and chancellery. So not just for fun. It complements the iPhone perfectly. The article summarizes it well. Good!!!!
I am also very proud of my iPad 2. :)
Booyah! ;)
Apple has already convinced me for the umpteenth time, although at the beginning I thought that the given innovation (the aluminum case of the Macbook, the angular design of the iPhone and finally the iPad) was stupid, of the opposite. They are simply one step ahead and know what we want even before we do :)
I don't understand one thing.
After reading this article and the comments, I came across articles where it was speculated what the Apple tablet would be. I hadn't watched it then, so I read them with interest.
Everyone was excited and full of expectations. Then when the iPad came out, disappointment prevailed. Basically the same thing happened with the iPhone, at least the 4S. Both then recorded record sales.
How is this actually possible?
Only then will everyone realize what it actually is and why?
Or was Jobs right that the customer doesn't know what he wants?
Or is it just an overabundance of expectations?
it JKr:
I think it's more the fact that the most negative voices of glass fans can be heard on the Internet after the launch of e.g. 4S, because those who were satisfied probably didn't write anything anywhere.
And then there is a large part of people who have never owned an iPhone.
As for the iPad and its lukewarm reception, I think people mainly didn't listen enough to the keynote at the time, where Steve said that it was a product aimed BETWEEN a smartphone and a laptop. Well, he couldn't even have a different sw than he has.
Still, it's not very logical. After all, the iPad was, and still is for some, just an overgrown mobile phone that can't make calls. All the anti-Apple people swear that it's just an advertisement and a bubble, but after all, not many people were enthusiastic about the launch and e.g. Samsung's advertisement is very similar. We don't even have one on Apple, what's next?
When the new iPad comes out, I can already see the disappointment that it's only a 2S or that it doesn't really have anything new.
People who write in the discussion about mobile phones are, in my opinion, a minority group of users who, as it seems, did not do the statistics.
In that case, it looks like it's really just fashion and being in the tech world. it doesn't excite people, not even apple fans.
The fact is that the iPad has become literally synonymous with tablets in some circles. In my opinion, the main pluses are that it is finished, has a great image and any competitor that tries to offer the same in the high-end segment cannot compete on price. However, with the iPad changing the way computers are used (see, for example http://www.businessit.cz/cz/apple-ipad-meni-svet-pocitacu-rychle-it-profesional-pruzkum.php ) in the end, the corresponding competition will surely come - it will undercut the iPad in price and grow rapidly. See, for example, the Amazon Fire, which has the disadvantage that it is not yet a proper tablet.
Finally an article worth something. And he solved the question "which tablet?" I especially applaud the author for the article about the display and aspect ratio. Damn, such an important thing and everyone goes through it like a country.