Which Tablet Operating system will gain the most marketshare over the next 12 months?

[rudeguy]

And Samsungs Android tablet will cost more, Moto's will have a Verizon contract tied to it. So it looks like for the time being outside of a cheap Chinese POS the iPad is going to be the best deal. I dunno about you, but I don't want a monthly bill tied to a device I'm still going to end up paying a few hundred bucks for. Of course you could always go for a Windows 7 Tablet, Samsung has one coming out that's only about $1,000.

I really hate to agree with you......

but I do. $1k for a tablet?

 

[dguy6789]

1. True
2. False
3. Better only in talk time. I can still see Android Tab being close to battery life though.
4. False, Android has $100 rebates. Android devices cost the same or more.
5. False, Android scrolling is pretty bad especially with flash
6. True, I would say good quality instead of extreme. Plastic is still a POS.
7. True

Sorry, you're dead wrong if you think the touch screen on any iPhone or iPad is better than the touch screen on a Droid X or 2.

I am talking about retail prices, the iPhone 4 is $599. You can find similar Android devices for less. Scrolling on something like a Droid X or Galaxy S is smooth. No matter how fast you scroll, the phone will keep up and you'll never see checkerboards. Zooming in and out with pinch zooming doesn't render all text unreadable until you stop like it does on iOS. Flash being an option, not a mandatory thing. The ability to turn it on when you want to watch a news video and then turn it off afterwards is great. What about being able to watch Hulu without having to buy the Hulu Plus app?

 

[OBLAMA2009]

1. Are you saying Android devices don't have a sleep mode and a way from waking from it? That's what your "turn on instantly" is and all Android devices do it.

2. Large responsive touch screen? Android phones have met or surpassed Apple in touch screen technology quite some time ago.

3. Droid X gets better battery life than the iPhone 4. No reason why a large Android tablet won't get good battery life as well.

4. There are Android devices that are more advanced than the iPhone 4 but cheaper than it, no reason there won't be a reasonably priced Android tablet.

5. Android blows Apple away in web browsing experience. I've seen the "you do not have the right plugin to view this video" more times than I can count on my iPad. What about the checkered squares?

6. Plenty of Android devices have extremely solid build quality.

7. Price of 3G is purely up to the carriers and has nothing to do with Android. No reason why AT&T would charge more for an Android tablet service than for the iPad.

What about the fact that the iPad requires iTunes? I could write a thousand words on why iTunes is bad but I imagine everyone is familiar with that by now considering the popularity of iOS devices. You can't charge your iPad and connect it to your PC at the same time. It's pretty annoying having to unplug the cable from the wall outlet and plug it into my PC when I want to sync and then plug it back into the wall when I'm done. No easy way to copy/move files to and from the iPad. When using the Brushes application, the best method of getting artwork from the iPad to the PC is via email. Are you kidding me? So no, the iPad doesn't approach perfection.

In short, you're just a fanboy who can't possibly post in a discussion involving Apple and its competitors without putting Apple on a pedestal.

i was referring mostly to the planned announced android tablets, not phones

 

[MrX8503]

Sorry, you're dead wrong if you think the touch screen on any iPhone or iPad is better than the touch screen on a Droid X or 2.

I am talking about retail prices, the iPhone 4 is $599. You can find similar Android devices for less. Scrolling on something like a Droid X or Galaxy S is smooth. No matter how fast you scroll, the phone will keep up and you'll never see checkerboards. Zooming in and out with pinch zooming doesn't render all text unreadable until you stop like it does on iOS. Flash being an option, not a mandatory thing. The ability to turn it on when you want to watch a news video and then turn it off afterwards is great. What about being able to watch Hulu without having to buy the Hulu Plus app?

-The touchscreen on the iPhone4 is better. The iPhone also has the best algorithms to give it the best accuracy and sensitivity.

http://hothardware.com/News/Screen-Test-Analysis-Pits-Smartphones-Against-One-Another-iPhone-Wins/

Are you saying the DroidX performs better than previous Android phones? Link me.

-Android costs $199 with $100 rebate. This makes it cost as much or more than the iPhone4. The retail cost of the iPhone4 is high because of demand and it being a GSM device.

-DroidX scrolling doesn't show checkerboards, but its not smooth. Its still a jittery browser.

-You can't watch Hulu natively on your phone.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Which means its market share can only go down.

Bingo! You don't even need High School Math to figure that one out...


Brian

 

[Gooberlx2]

People want the full desktop OS experience on a tablet IMO.

Meh, I disagree. I think people are definitely attracted to super mobile, finger-friendly, simple UI machines for "consuming" media and other simple tasks. Full desktop OSes are still suited to larger and more powerful machines for better multitasking, content creation and screen real estate.

Those are reasons I'd much rather have a tablet than a netbook, for example. My ul30vt is pretty damn portable for a laptop and reasonably powerful for my purposes (I'm certainly not encoding h.264 HD videos with tolerable speed), and gets great battery life. But it still doesn't compare to how quick, convenient and stupid simple my dad's iPad is for a web browsing session, or flicking through pictures.

 

[dguy6789]

-The touchscreen on the iPhone4 is better. The iPhone also has the best algorithms to give it the best accuracy and sensitivity.

http://hothardware.com/News/Screen-Test-Analysis-Pits-Smartphones-Against-One-Another-iPhone-Wins/

Are you saying the DroidX performs better than previous Android phones? Link me.

-Android costs $199 with $100 rebate. This makes it cost as much or more than the iPhone4. The retail cost of the iPhone4 is high because of demand and it being a GSM device.

-DroidX scrolling doesn't show checkerboards, but its not smooth. Its still a jittery browser.

-You can't watch Hulu natively on your phone.

I don't disagree that the iPhone outperforms the phones linked in that comparison in touch screen performance but new Android devices have much better touch screens than what was on the Nexus One or Droid.

http://androidandme.com/2010/04/news/htc-incredible-and-evo-4g-to-feature-new-maxtouch-sensors/

As far as I know every new Android device since the Incredible came out is using one of these.

I would argue that scrolling is smooth on high end Android devices, not 60fps smooth but definitely smooth scrolling. If it's exceedingly choppy then the user probably is multitasking with something CPU intensive, not running just the browser.

All any Android user with Flash has to do is set the browser to not say it's a mobile browser and you can watch Hulu.

 

[MrX8503]

I don't disagree that the iPhone outperforms the phones linked in that comparison in touch screen performance but new Android devices have much better touch screens than what was on the Nexus One or Droid.

http://androidandme.com/2010/04/news/htc-incredible-and-evo-4g-to-feature-new-maxtouch-sensors/

As far as I know every new Android device since the Incredible came out is using one of these.

I would argue that scrolling is smooth on high end Android devices, not 60fps smooth but definitely smooth scrolling. If it's exceedingly choppy then the user probably is multitasking with something CPU intensive, not running just the browser.

All any Android user with Flash has to do is set the browser to not say it's a mobile browser and you can watch Hulu.

That link just says that HTC is using a better touch technology than previous models, so I'm not sure why you're assuming that its much better than the iPhone4's.

Scrolling/Zooming on Android is ok, but its not as smooth as the iPhone. Scrolling on the homescreen only gets worse, but that may be attributed to widgets. Trust me, if Android was smooth I would of gotten an Android device. I'll wait for Gingerbread or Honeycomb.

From my understanding, even if you run your browser as a desktop, Hulu will still block you.

 

[dguy6789]

That link just says that HTC is using a better touch technology than previous models, so I'm not sure why you're assuming that its much better than the iPhone4's.

Scrolling/Zooming on Android is ok, but its not as smooth as the iPhone. Scrolling on the homescreen only gets worse, but that may be attributed to widgets. Trust me, if Android was smooth I would of gotten an Android device. I'll wait for Gingerbread or Honeycomb.

From my understanding, even if you run your browser as a desktop, Hulu will still block you.

I am showing you that new phones have better touch screens than was in the article you posted to show that iPhone has better touch screens; IE it's now an out of date article. I didn't say the screens were better than iPhone's, I said they were at least as good. I don't have any kind of problem with accuracy or anything on my X nor on my iPad.

Widgets can definitely slow things down, they are mini applications that take up resources. If you disable all of the bells and whistles and only run one application at a time just like the iPhone does, you'll get iPhone-like performance, it's not rocket science that if one runs a bunch of things at once that it will slow down. iOS does have more animation than Android does, but that is not to be confused with actual performance such as application running or loading performance(Many people confuse this).

Lots of people have been watching Hulu on their Android devices using the method.

 

[MrX8503]

I am showing you that new phones have better touch screens than was in the article you posted to show that iPhone has better touch screens; IE it's now an out of date article. I didn't say the screens were better than iPhone's, I said they were at least as good.

2. Large responsive touch screen? Android phones have met or surpassed Apple in touch screen technology quite some time ago.

Widgets can definitely slow things down, they are mini applications that take up resources. If you disable all of the bells and whistles and only run one application at a time just like the iPhone does, you'll get iPhone-like performance, it's not rocket science that if one runs a bunch of things at once that it will slow down. iOS does have more animation than Android does, but that is not to be confused with actual performance such as application running or loading performance(Many people confuse this).

Lots of people have been watching Hulu on their Android devices using the method.

BS, iPhone has been faster since 1st Gen and still fast now with multitasking. Widgets do slow things down but everything about the OS is laggy. Android is not optimized, thus the reason for gingerbread. Also that animation is called polish, something android could use a bit of.

I remember seeing with my own eyes that hulu was not playable on a mobile device. I'm going to verify that.

 

[Spicedaddy]

..

 

[dguy6789]

BS, iPhone has been faster since 1st Gen and still fast now with multitasking. Widgets do slow things down but everything about the OS is laggy. Android is not optimized, thus the reason for gingerbread. Also that animation is called polish, something android could use a bit of.

I remember seeing with my own eyes that hulu was not playable on a mobile device. I'm going to verify that.

Now I'm starting to be confused. There is no shortage of benchmarks(including Anandtech ones) showing that the fastest Android phones load various apps(camera, google maps, browser and others) faster than any iPhone. Heck, even the Nexus One with Android 2.2 benchmarks better than the iPad does in javascript.

iOS simply has a transition animation that plays from the time you tap something until the time it opens making it seem like the phone isn't loading but displaying an animation; but the time things actually take to open is longer. On Android when you tap on an app the app will just pop onto the screen without an animation(with the exception of a few apps that do have an opening animation). It looks less pleasing so to speak but that's not "laggy". Android is no less responsive, it's just not as nice looking.

Anecdote: Comparing my iPad to my Droid X, the iPad has a lot more fluid animation for doing things but it doesn't actually open apps or perform any tasks faster by any noticeable margin.

If you have a state of the art Android phone and it's noticeably slower than an iPhone or iPad then I would chalk it up to user error much the same as I would if someone had a top of the line Windows PC that was running slowly. It's not difficult at all to bog down an Android phone just like it's not difficult to bog down a Windows PC.

"Android is not optimized, thus the reason for gingerbread." I thought nearly all well supported OSes get updates that improve them? How about "iOS is not optimized, thus the reason for iOS 4"?

 

[randomlinh]

nothing will take over the iPad in the next 12 months. However, I'm waiting for my webOS tablet.

 

[DivideBYZero]

I expect the iPad will retain the largest slice of the pie, but, as has been already mentioned, it has the whole market to lose.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I expect the iPad will retain the largest slice of the pie, but, as has been already mentioned, it has the whole market to lose.

Yep. I have a feeling the intent of the OP was to talk about who would be the share leader (not greatest gains) but I do suppose we have to talk about what was actually posted.

 

[MrX8503]

Now I'm starting to be confused. There is no shortage of benchmarks(including Anandtech ones) showing that the fastest Android phones load various apps(camera, google maps, browser and others) faster than any iPhone. Heck, even the Nexus One with Android 2.2 benchmarks better than the iPad does in javascript.

iOS simply has a transition animation that plays from the time you tap something until the time it opens making it seem like the phone isn't loading but displaying an animation; but the time things actually take to open is longer. On Android when you tap on an app the app will just pop onto the screen without an animation(with the exception of a few apps that do have an opening animation). It looks less pleasing so to speak but that's not "laggy". Android is no less responsive, it's just not as nice looking.

Anecdote: Comparing my iPad to my Droid X, the iPad has a lot more fluid animation for doing things but it doesn't actually open apps or perform any tasks faster by any noticeable margin.

If you have a state of the art Android phone and it's noticeably slower than an iPhone or iPad then I would chalk it up to user error much the same as I would if someone had a top of the line Windows PC that was running slowly. It's not difficult at all to bog down an Android phone just like it's not difficult to bog down a Windows PC.

"Android is not optimized, thus the reason for gingerbread." I thought nearly all well supported OSes get updates that improve them? How about "iOS is not optimized, thus the reason for iOS 4"?

If you read the Droid Incredible review from Anand he states that its stuttery and that animations are removed so that it can perform tasks faster.

The fact of the matter is that Android does not implement GPU acceleration, so it cannot have all the bells and whistles that an iPhone has without taking a performance hit.

Android performs tasks as fast or faster, but its performance is very jarring. I played with a friends DroidX and the jarring results in touch errors. Its almost like it throws out all the in between frames.

Just as that promo video from Atmel Touch screens, "Touch interface should feel like an extension of you". Quite frankly Android is very very far away from this, the iPhone is the closest one thus far.

When you have a superior physics engine, touch screen, responsiveness, and sensitivity, you're less likely to have user touch errors. You have less touch errors because what you see on the screen is what you see how a physical item behaves in real life. I have not seen a platform that has this same precision as the iPhone, I'm pretty close to making a youtube video to demonstrate what I mean.

If you read up on Gingerbread, its sole purpose is to speed/pretty up Android. Its optimization is specific. iOS4 was created to create folders/multitasking/game center, etc. It was not a speed optimization.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Yep. I have a feeling the intent of the OP was to talk about who would be the share leader (not greatest gains) but I do suppose we have to talk about what was actually posted.

Of course. I fully expect the iPad to be the leader. It created a new market.

 

[akugami]

It's currently the only MASS MARKET tablet OS right now. All the others haven't had a big splash.

With Google officially saying that Android isn't suitable for tablets, it'll hurt it a lot. It's good for us geeks as we don't want a shit device but bad for regular consumers as that means many cheaper tablets won't come out and keep current tablets at high prices.

I agree iOS is currently the only mass market tablet OS right now. Windows based tablets simply aren't built for tablets. It works but it doesn't quite cut it in many cases. However, on the subject of Android I think Google is saying that the current 2.2 version is not suitable for tablets and not that it isn't suitable at all. It clearly works from the few Android tablets out in the market.

Personally I think iOS will very successful...while at the same time losing market share next year. Android probably won't make a serious dent in the tablet OS market until next year and is the OS most likely poised for explosive growth.

And with all that said...I'm looking into an ultra-portable laptop with a Geforce 400m series and an Intel CULV processor.

Now I'm starting to be confused. There is no shortage of benchmarks(including Anandtech ones) showing that the fastest Android phones load various apps(camera, google maps, browser and others) faster than any iPhone. Heck, even the Nexus One with Android 2.2 benchmarks better than the iPad does in javascript.

iOS simply has a transition animation that plays from the time you tap something until the time it opens making it seem like the phone isn't loading but displaying an animation; but the time things actually take to open is longer. On Android when you tap on an app the app will just pop onto the screen without an animation(with the exception of a few apps that do have an opening animation). It looks less pleasing so to speak but that's not "laggy". Android is no less responsive, it's just not as nice looking.

To be honest, I've looked at my brother's Android phone and my own iPhone 4 and while the Android does certain things (not always) like load up apps faster, in terms of overall processing power, the iPhone is still a top notch phone and can hold it's own with any Android phone. While benchmarks testing javascript can be helpful, it's the overall speed of native apps that are important. And from this standpoint, iPhone apps are plenty fast on the latest iPhone 4 hardware. iOS is also a more polished OS and sometimes it's the polish that separates a good OS from an OS with good points.

 

[zerocool84]

So when is the Galaxy Tab supposed to come out and how much is it going to be? It looks cool but obviously we are going to need hands on reviews of it before we make judgment on it.

 

[Pliablemoose]

So when is the Galaxy Tab supposed to come out and how much is it going to be? It looks cool but obviously we are going to need hands on reviews of it before we make judgment on it.

Just browsed the info from today, released through TMobile, Sprint, ATT & Verizon, 3G data only, (WiFi only model to be released as well) they removed the voice feature that the Europeans get.

Looks like the subsidized model is the only one they're going to sell here.

I'm going to guess $299+ subsidized, the WiFi only version $399+ Pricing will be interesting, they really have to price it for less than the iPad, the public is going to have a hard time understanding why the WiFi only version costs more than the 3G, because they're in denial about the true costs without the contract subsidy.

I really wish Samsung would just release the tablets themselves and do the 3G the same way Apple & AT&T have done, month to month data, without the subsidy of the contract, but it'll keep the carriers happy, and keep that cash flowing in to them...

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

The problem with Tablet OSes is that they are mostly in its infancy. iOS seems to be the only OS that was designed with tablets in mind. Any Windows OS for Tablets is just Windows 7 compacted to be put on tablets. Android still has the problem of fragmentation. I think WebOS will make the biggest splash in the Tablet OS market.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

how does this sound: rim goes out of business, meego never makes it to market, android defeats apple, ms sues google, google pulls android, ms become king of the hill

 

[MrX8503]

The problem with Tablet OSes is that they are mostly in its infancy. iOS seems to be the only OS that was designed with tablets in mind. Any Windows OS for Tablets is just Windows 7 compacted to be put on tablets. Android still has the problem of fragmentation. I think WebOS will make the biggest splash in the Tablet OS market.

Its because iOS was originally developed for the Tablet from the ground up several years ago. In its midlife it was transformed into a mobile OS.

I believe this is one of the reasons why iOS is so mature and handles the tablet market very well. It simply has a much longer development life cycle compared to other OSs. Also Android was never meant to run a tablet, so it is no where near mature as iOS in that regard.