Even though tablet computers have existed for years, the arrival of the iPad put a new twist on the concept. Although Apple has managed to be the only high-profile tablet maker in town for several months, iPad sales numbers made it clear that it wouldn’t have this new niche to itself forever.
A few companies bravely jumped in early with their offerings, but they’ve remained relatively obscure. Well, no more of that. The honeymoon’s over — Samsung has released its Galaxy Tab, a tablet computer that runs on the Android operating system.
So how does this newcomer compare? For one thing, the Galaxy has a 7-inch screen instead of the iPad’s 10-incher. Apple CEO Steve Jobs made it a point to bash 7-inch screens during an investor conference call last month, basically saying they’re too little to be adequate tablets and too big to be real smartphones.
I guess some people will think a 7-inch screen is harder to type on. Some will think it’s easier. It’s definitely easier to tote around a smaller device, and that screen measurement may even affect the Galaxy’s app outlook.
With the 10-inch iPad, you can technically use some iPhone apps on the tablet. They don’t look good, though, since they’re designed for a much smaller screen. Developers serious about selling to the iPad crowd have to design specific iPad apps that take advantage of the whole screen.
Meanwhile, the Android Market has very, very few apps designed specifically for the Galaxy’s 7-inch screen. Most of the apps Galaxy owners will use — for now, anyway — will be regular old Android apps designed for smaller smartphone screens. They’ll just scale up to 7 inches. Will they look like crap after inflating that much? Perhaps not — going from about 4 to 7 inches isn’t that much of a stretch. If the 7-inch format is a winner for tablets, maybe Android developers won’t have to spend any time at all making a separate app just to address tablet users.
There’s also the Flash factor — Galaxy’s got it, iPad doesn’t, and probably won’t ever. Users of other iOS devices seem to want Flash. A new browser called “Skyfire” arrived in the App Store last week, and it promises the ability to play Flash videos through the iPhone. It proved to be pretty popular. Galaxy users, of course, won’t have to download a separate browser; their browsers will have Flash built in.
But how much does the iPhone’s lack of Flash really hurt it? It used to be a pretty glaring shortcoming in iOS Safari. Now, though, a lot of Web video channels are making their content play nice with the native iOS browser, so the need to whip out a separate app to handle Flash comes up less and less frequently.
Galaxy also has a few other things the iPad doesn’t, for the time being: dual cameras and multitasking. Actually, that multitasking bit may not be technically true depending on when you see this. Apple’s expected to release an update literally any minute now that will give iPad multitasking. It can’t really add cameras by way of a software update, but that’s likely high on the list of iPad 2 features. When iPad 2 will come, though, that’s the mystery. Could be April … June … August … who knows?
Listen to the podcast (13:10 minutes).
Boomerang Generation
A few years ago, Nokia had what sounded like a plausibly decent ideaat the time: Send Symbian, its mobile OS, out into the wild world ofopen source, where it could meet new cultures and flourish outside theconstraints of the strict corporate rules it had at home. It was likegoing off to college.
The nonprofit Symbian Foundation was started to oversee theplatform’s development, and the hope was that the world’s most popularsmartphone OS at the time could get a good education and turn intosomething that would easily maintain its edge over these upstarts inthe wings — Android and iPhone.
It’s now two and a half years later, and Symbian still holds the titleof the world’s most popular smartphone OS. However, it’s clearlylosing ground fast to Android and iPhone, not to mention the fact thatMicrosoft is finally back in the game with a new mobile OS of its own.It won’t be long before a rival claims larger numbers.
Nokia as a company still happens to be the world’s biggest overallcellphone vendor, but the story behind that statistic is similar: Moreand more of its sales have been coming from low-margin feature phonesrather than powerful devices running a true smartphone platform.
Not only that, but it seems not even Nokia thinks Symbian’s up to thetask of going head-to-head with Apple’s or Android’s varsity squad.Last summer, it announced that its top-shelf line of N-seriessmartphones would begin shipping with MeeGo, the love child of Intel’sMoblin and Nokia’s Maemo platforms. Symbian’s still shipping on someNokia smartphones, but not the high-line stuff.
So Nokia’s ordered Symbian to come home. The Symbian Foundation hasbeen relieved of its development responsibilities; now developmentwill happen behind Nokia’s doors. The foundation will focus on stufflike licensing.
Nokia characterized the move as a reaffirmation of its commitment tothe Symbian platform, but that platform’s future now is very foggy.The massive leadership shake-up happening at Nokia means a lot of theexecutives who likely championed Symbian years ago are either out thedoor or working for a new boss. Now that Symbian’s youngerhalf-brother is the main focus of Nokia’s smartphone software R&D, andnow that the older OS has basically been pulled out of college andtold to go back to living in its parents’ basement, its future is notbright.
Android Ascendant
But just how quickly is Symbian bleeding out? Well, market researchfirm Gartner just so happens to have published some statistics on thattopic this week, and the numbers don’t look good for Nokia. Itssmartphone platform had 36.6 percent of the market in the thirdquarter of the year. In the third quarter of 2009, it had 44.6percent.
So if this trend continues, which platform is going to inherit thetitle? I’m not going to bet on Research In Motion — BlackBerry justkeeps coming up short lately. Hardware-wise, its latest big thing, theTorch, was not superstar material. It has the big corporate accountsand its fair share of religious fanatics, but number one in the world?Nah.
I guess it’s not even fair to mention Windows Phone 7 at this point.It didn’t make it onto Gartner’s charts because it wasn’t evenavailable in the third quarter, but let’s give it a year or two beforeeven including it in these types of conversations.
iPhone is going strong, but at this moment, the numbers aren’t on itsside. There’s just one company behind the device, and in a lot ofmarkets, including the U.S., it’s tied to a single carrier. Besides,Apple is what it is despite — or possibly because of — the fact thatit rarely dominates in terms of market share.
Sheer market share momentum right now belongs to Android. The thing with Android is that it’s freely distributed — anyone can use it. Even I could set up shop and start selling Android phones, if I knew thingone about building them. Wouldn’t have to shake any hands or sign anylicense agreements or anything. Big hardware players — HTC, Motorola,Samsung — have all latched on, declared themselves Android acolytes,and pushed out millions of handsets over a multitude of carriers.
The acceleration has been remarkable. According to Gartner’s figures,in Q3 of 2010, Android claimed the second place in the market sharerace with 25.5 percent. A year ago, it was at 3.5 percent. That wouldbe pretty impressive if the market had stayed the same size, butthat’s far from the truth. The overall cellphone market grew 35percent over the last year, and a big part of that growth was drivenby increased smartphone sales.
So Very Disappointed
Being caught in the middle of a feud between your twomost-used websites can bring about an odd brew of emotions. For thosewho have painfully unmet needs to feel cared for and special, well,there you go. Two companies are fighting over your data. On top ofthat, it can be a little frustrating, but also somewhat amusing, liketwo heavyweight boxers having a slap fight.
The two big guys in question are Google and Facebook. It used to bethat Facebook used a Google API to let its users import their Gmailcontacts’ information directly into Facebook. All this information youhave about your friends and neighbors in Gmail could just be sent overto your Facebook account with the click of a button.
But Google said Facebook didn’t know how to give back. It’d promptusers to grab their Gmail contacts, but Gmail had no way of dippinginto users’ friends lists. So up went the barricade. Facebook lostaccess to the API and could no longer import contacts.
It might not sound like that big a deal to Facebook pros who alreadyhave four-figure friend counts. But when you’re just getting startedwith Facebook, it can really help you find your bearings and branchout by being able to automatically load up your Gmail list.
So Facebook got out the shovel and started digging under the wall.Google may have blocked Facebook’s access to this particular datachute, but Google does allow all users to export their data directlyto themselves. It’s your data — just ask and you shall receive. SoFacebook built an automated deep link that taps into this general dataspigot and then pipes the info right back into Facebook. Same resultfrom the user’s point of view, but a complete subversion of Google’sintentions on the back end.
So far, it seems Google’s decided to pretty much leave it at that, thoughit doesn’t sound like it’s all that happy about it. In its response,it even whipped out the D-word, the golden gun in any PR writer’sarsenal of passive-aggressive terminology: “disappointed.” Specifically,it’s disappointed that Facebook can suck data out of Google’s tubesbut Google can’t suck anything out of Facebook’s. Where’s thereciprocity?
The spat is really just one part of an escalating conflict between twoof the biggest companies on the Web. Facebook’s pushing out more andmore features that could grow into serious threats to Google’s admodel, and if — as expected — Google’s next move is to pull off asocial networking play that’s several shades cleverer than that Buzzdisaster, Facebook could have its first major competitor on its handssince it took down an already sick and weakened MySpace.
From Newsstand to Appstand
Magazine and newspaper publishers have had a rough decade or twolately, what with all the news going places by way of non-paper-basedmeans. And just putting up a website and selling ads is by no means asolution if what you’re really doing is putting together a big,glossy, expensive magazine that nobody’s buying because they’re busyreading it for free online.
The emerging market of tablets and e-readers may offer anotheropportunity for salvation, and Amazon’s recently done something topush that possibility along a little further. It’s more than doubledthe cut that publishers get when they sell periodicals through theKindle store. Now it’s 70/30, with the 70 going toward publishers.This revenue split now more closely resembles the one offered by Applefor iPad publications.
Selling digital issues of a publication to e-reader and tablet usersis attractive to publishers because it gets readers back into a buyingrather than surfing mentality. Instead of poking through a website toread a magazine’s articles, a reader can pay a few bucks to downloadthe full issue — the articles and all the little tidbits in between.It’s likely there will still be ads, of course, but at least it won’tbe the only way for pubs to pay the rent. Best part of all: no littlesubscription postcards falling into your lap when you turn the page.
There’s still a lot of trial and error down the road for digitalissues, though. Formatting for both landscape and portrait views canbe a pain — just ask Sports Illustrated. And unless Amazoncomes out with a color e-reader soon, magazines are going to look kindof bland on the Kindle. Then there’s the question of what happens tofree Web content if digital issues eventually catch on. It’s unlikelypublishers will want to put their top-shelf content on the open Webwhen so many readers could be paying for it through the tablets thatwe’ll all be theoretically toting around in five years. Digital editionscould be one more way in which the Internet de-Webifies, with a greateramount of content siloed away into a growing world of apps.
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After reading several articles, I weighed in on who I thought would in the cage match: the iPad or the Galaxy Tab. When it came down to it, I decided:
On software: the iPad wins, particularly because it has such a head start in garnering software apps designed specifically for the tablet.
On hardware: it depends on your needs; if you want to video conference, it’s Tab by default. If you want to watch movies on flights, the battery life capability leads back to iPad.
That said…
It’s exciting that the next round of Android software for the tablet will specifically be tailored to the product, and it could lead to a major jump forward for the tab.
If you want to read more about my take on this cage match, complete with illustrations, try:
http://glowsandbeeps.blogspot.com/2010/11/cage-match-apple-ipad-versus-samsung.html