hgjhg

LAST NEWS

Friday, August 17, 2012

Microsoft Surface could be the last straw for Android tablets progeasy

The tablet user experience is a curious thing. There’s really two different kinds of users. You are either a tablet user that wants to move some of the content from your smartphone to a larger screen, or you’ve got it in your mind that you can curb your PC dependent workflow around the limitations of the tablet OS.

When you find yourself as the latter, you wind up playing this game of sacrifices and compromises. You spend hours looking for the right combinations of apps to accomplish the tasks you would normally complete with ease on your traditional PC. When it works, and you are able to bend your workflow to suit your device, there’s this sense of victory over your task as though you’ve beaten the system. The reality of the situation is that, whether you are using iOS or Android, you were the one who was beaten into obeying the limitations of the hardware in front of you.

When I first laid eyes on Windows 8, it became incredibly clear that Microsoft had figured it out long before anyone else did. Eventually, users would realize that the limitations they had forced themselves to obey wasn’t what they actually wanted. Walk into any Apple Store, Best Buy, or Fry’s, and ask the guy behind the counter what the top accessory for the iPad is, and you’ll be guided to the keyboards. Ask any Android tablet fan out there what the most popular Android tablet is, and the one’s that don’t point to the Kindle Fire will point to the Asus Transformer series with its handy keyboard dock.

Microsoft sat and watched as Apple raked in cash with the iPad, and watched as Google appealed to the tinkerers with Android tablets. Neither of them is capable of offering a complete thought, but offering enough to spark a massive interest in the category. Tablets are cool, even if we’re not entirely sure what they are for just yet.

Apple is already well seated in the tablet market. The iPad isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and it shouldn’t. For what it does, the iPad is a fantastic device. Thanks to the incredible developer community that device gets smarter every day. The more apps there are, the more likely another user is to be able to insert their PC workflow into the Apple ecosystem. It’s a slow road, in my opinion, but you can’t argue with the incredible results Apple has gotten out of their approach to the tablet.

Very soon, Microsoft will be taking to the tablet market with Surface. Surface is going to offer exciting hardware, but more importantly it is going to offer the Windows 8 experience. For many users, that is going to mean they can have a tablet and not need to adjust their existing workflow to suit a device. The hardware and software combination that is Microsoft Surface is going to seriously affect the tablet market, and more than likely squeeze Android even further out of the game.

As a huge fan of Android phones, it has been nothing short of sad to see the floundering failure that is the Android tablet experience so far. Android 4.0 brought some much needed clarity to user experience, but as it stands right now there are far too many tablets running an older version for it to matter. The pricing on many of the Android tablets is far too high, and every single carrier that has offered an Android tablet has botched it with subsidies.

The last year in the Android tablet space has been long and painful, and every day that a manufacturer does not update a tablet to 4.0 drives the whole ecosystem further down the drain. The only people buying Android tablets right now are the users who feel some loyalty to the platform, or people buying the Amazon Kindle Fire. There’s a lot of speculation as to what Google and their partners are going to do next in order to save the platform, but every day that plan isn’t in place is one day closer to the launch of Surface.

All Microsoft has to do is offer their ARM Surface tablet for $500, and more than half of the Android tablets in existence would immediately become irrelevant. If the device launches for closer to $600 then the only thing keeping Android tablets alive will be the ability to reach a lower price point. Users who don’t see the tablet as a laptop replacement, and are only interested in the least expensive item, would pick up Android tablets. Otherwise, the choice becomes pretty clearly positioned between the simplicity of the iPad and the total experience of Surface.

If Microsoft manages to price themselves out of the market, then Android tablets will be able to continue growing marketshare and build themselves a foothold. But if Microsoft plays it right, the future of Android tablets is very bleak indeed.

There’s also the hardware manufacturers to consider. Microsoft has dealt a fairly crushing blow to its partners by announcing an incredibly impressive product, and there are whispers all over about Android OEM’s being uneasy about Google’s Motorola acquisition. Asus, Toshiba, Dell, all of these companies now face a unique situation for the future: they will have to gamble and choose the operating system that is most likely to sell devices, but is also less likely to compete with them directly.

Microsoft has a nasty history of flipping a switch and ending agreements with companies. Ask any of the portable media player manufacturers who jumped in bed with Microsoft to save them from the iPod how that “Plays For Sure” certification program worked out for them. If these companies decide to put more of their energy into Android rather than Windows 8, we could see an all new wave of high quality yet inexpensive Android tablets targeting Surface.

It feels like Microsoft sat back and gladly allowed Google and Apple to make their mistakes with the tablet ecosystem, and when a clear path was made they decided to participate. I think Surface is a terrific approach to the tablet, and the closest thing to a complete experience that I have seen from a tablet yet.

Windows 8 and Surface are going to make some waves as long as Microsoft doesn’t botch the landing with a hefty pricetag or technical issues. Google is going to need more than luck for Android to survive in the tablet market, and for their sake I hope they have a solid plan of attack. Otherwise, we’re looking at the end of Android tablets.

source : geek

0 comments:

Post a Comment