Analyst: ICS Does Not Solve Android's Main Problem

[Guest]

The main challenge in the tablet market continues to be differentiation...There are still too many tablets offering similar usage experiences, making it difficult to compete with the entrenched player, Apple and its iPad...

When its Android with its X amount of different tablets vs Apple and its TWO tablets (iPad 1 and 2), Android has the problem of its tablets not being different enough from one another? This makes no sense.

 

[CyberAngel]

Android problem: emulation - slooow, needing 2-core [plus: fast to adapt]
Apple problem: love/hate customer base [plus: slick 1-core operation]
HP problem: what was that OS again?
Intel problem: MeeGo or what?
RIM problem: shrinking
Nokia problem: shrinking + Elop as a mole
MeeGo: N9 = Marvellous product - destroyed by M$ mole Elop
Symbian: N8 best hardware, outdated software, still going strong for years (Accenture)
Windows 7.5 too little too late, waiting for WP8
......
The winner in year 2015: WP9+
1) Samsung
2) HTC
3) Nokia

What about iApple iProducts?
No Jobs = no jobs

 

[alidan]

make a cellphone/tablet doc that works as a wireless base connected to the tv.

give us a keyboard/mouse/gamepad support

and there you go, you just made a game console, and a portable device all on one.

you get kids, parents, and teen support all in 1, easy move.

WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO THINGS OF THIS

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]darkgauntlett[/nom]everything over the air? from itunes?[/citation]

No, over the 'cloud'. iTunes is not required at all anymore.

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]I think that analyst got it backwards. In this particular case, the "fragmentation" of Android actually makes it attractive to folks that don't want to be locked down to 1 manufacturer+OS combo[/citation]

How are you 'locked down' more when you buy an Apple than an Android? As I see it, whichever phone you buy, you're stuck with that OS and Hardware, and when your contract runs out you again have the option to buy ANY other phone. Where's the problem?

There are so many downsides to fragmentation, so many Android handsets never get the updates because they have to wait for their phone manufacturer to release the updated software, sometimes months after it comes out, sometimes never.

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]Yea I have seen many people who use iTunes, not cause they like it cause they HAVE too to use their iPods or iPhones and all told me they did not like it. When a few got rid of their Apple product and I showed them how to use WMP or another Media Player to organize music and they saw the speed boost getting rid of iTunes gave they were astounded. Moral of story, 36 million people are forced to use the software, do not confuse that with them being happy to use it.[/citation]

Did you somehow miss the many posts telling you that you DON'T .... NEED ... ITUNES, at all. 36 million people can at least read.

[citation][nom]kanaida[/nom]Putting OS aside. I'd gladly take an adroid tablet because I don't have to deal with that bloated crappy Itunes software. Apps that "act" pretty but don't have any of the features I need, for example their PDF readers are very crappy, and the built in one didn't even have searching. I cringe when i'm fixing a pc and I see Itunes installed. What's worse is that when I do walk around with my much smaller android tablet, people always go "hey that's really cool, is it an Ipad?" and I tell them of course not, here hold it. It's not an anvil, and that I'm not going to cry if I drop this lol[/citation]

Did you continue to say that you don't care if you drop it because it has hardly any apps, ridiculously slow performance and awful touch screen, and is not even remotely comparable to an iPad? You know, the full story instead of the sugar-coated 'I'm cheap so I'll buy an old Ford and claim it's the same as an Aston Martin' story?

 

[Guest]

I agree about iTunes. I have both iMac, iPhone 3GS and a Toshiba PC. I never wanted to use iTunes and i think it is the worst product Apple has ever made. All of my friends using iPhone, iMac saying the same thing: If we can choose we never choose iTunes.

 

[Goldengoose]

I was just reading CyberAngel's post and made me think... this is an Apple vs Android argument - where's watcha? Right on cue.

On topic, i don't think a lack of differentiation is a problem. The average user hates change - i worked an xmas in Asda a few years back and the amount of complaints we'd get when we moved sections around was unreal. They didn't care we were putting different/better products/offers in front of them, they only cared about finding their usual items that they know. Same applies to average users.

 

[kanaida]

all I'm saying is that if I drop 200 dollar tablet you might the upset but if I drop something that's 500 dollars it's like dropping your tv. big loss. for a toy.

 

[cyberkuberiah]

LOLz, just that

 

[zblade]

@watcha

Are you telling me that 36 million people has iphone 4S? I didn't know there was so many already sold. I am pretty sure you need iOS5 to use the apple iCloud and I am pretty sure if you don't have iOS5 you need "iTunes" to install it. So, unless you are the 1-2 million people who already has an iPhone 4S, you have to have iTunes until you upgrade to iOS5.

Even if you have got iOS5, you will still need iTunes, iCloud will not update your iPhone. So unless you are planning to never update your iPhone you will need iTunes to update your iphone. Also, unless you are on a unlimited data plan, have fun downloading 16gb, 32gb or *gasp* 64gb of data via iCloud.

 

[lamorpa]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]make a cellphone/tablet doc that works as a wireless base connected to the tv. give us a keyboard/mouse/gamepad supportand there you go, you just made a game console, and a portable device all on one. you get kids, parents, and teen support all in 1, easy move. WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO THINGS OF THIS[/citation]
You're the only one who thinks of this because most people don't think (and publish) dumb ideas. A game console sacrifices power consumption, heat, size, wireless interfaces, etc. for one goal: high graphics rendering speed. A tablet or phone is meant to be low power, low heat, small and have wireless interfaces. You can't get more opposite requirements.

 

[everygamer]

I think the point the author is trying to make is that the market for tablets is not a big, nor growing as fast as phones. As such, there are too many tablet players in the market on the Android side and instead of it being android vs apple, because of the smaller market is is android vs apple vs android. Some of the tablet manufacturers building Android tablets might want to consider working together to produce a co-branded tablet running Android, thus they will stop fighting each other and could share the profit margin and distribute the cost of building the devices. Its not likely to happen, but with the current state of things the tablet market does not appear to be big enough for several major manufacturers to produce devices and expect the sales numbers to be high enough to cover the R&D, manufacturing and distribution.

That said, we have also seen a number of players stepping out of the tablet (HP, possibly RIM) market and as this continues to happen it just improves the position of those that remain, fewer cuts from the pie.

Samsung and ASUS will likely remain center stage as the leading Android tablet makers, especially if they can continue to produce a quality low cost product as they have (Samsung Galaxy Tab, ASUS Transformer). Plus companies like ASUS are blazing ahead of Apple with the products like the ASUS Transformer Prime which will sport the Kal-El quad core processor from Nvidia.

Its going to be interesting to watch the market over the next year to see where it ends up.

One last note, the fragmentation issue which Android had before, was never really much of an issue, it was just the hot topic that Apple liked to toss around about the product. You could always look up on the android development site the % market share of each version of android, and so long as you selected the minimum level the application was generally compatible with all newer versions without modification. So if you wrote for Android 2.0, it would generally work on 2.1,2.2,2.3,3.0,3.1,3.2,etc. It just would not work on anything below 2.0. The majority of the market 90%+ of devices are and have been running better than 2.0 for some time.

 

[everygamer]

[citation][nom]lamorpa[/nom]You're the only one who thinks of this because most people don't think (and publish) dumb ideas. A game console sacrifices power consumption, heat, size, wireless interfaces, etc. for one goal: high graphics rendering speed. A tablet or phone is meant to be low power, low heat, small and have wireless interfaces. You can't get more opposite requirements.[/citation]

Keep an eye on onlive.com in the next few months. They have stated that they were working on bluetooth gamepad support for Android tablets (and ipads) so that their streaming gaming service works through the tablet device and the user can use a gamepad. Most Android tablets have HDMI which allows them to display on a PC, you combine that with onlive + gamepad + HDMI connection and you have a game console.

I have tried their service on my PC w/ a windows XBOX360 controller and Batman Arkham Asylum and it worked out really well. Saw no lag, gameplay was the same as when I played the game on my 360 and it looked just as good.

 

[everygamer]

Correction, in my previous post, I said the HDMI allows tablets to display on a PC, I meant to say display on TV's

 

[lamorpa]

[citation][nom]everygamer[/nom]Keep an eye on onlive.com in the next few months. They have stated that they were working on bluetooth gamepad support for Android tablets (and ipads) so that their streaming gaming service works through the tablet device and the user can use a gamepad. Most Android tablets have HDMI which allows them to display on a PC, you combine that with onlive + gamepad + HDMI connection and you have a game console.I have tried their service on my PC w/ a windows XBOX360 controller and Batman Arkham Asylum and it worked out really well. Saw no lag, gameplay was the same as when I played the game on my 360 and it looked just as good.[/citation]
No first person shooter (the bulk console market) is going to be appropriately responsive over a present day internet connection. A tablet or phone as the sender/receiver and display device will only make this worse. It's fine for the casual gamer or a demo, but the variation in response times alone will make it unwieldy.

 

[torque79]

This analyst is out to lunch. There's already a massive differentiation between Apple and everyone else's tablets: the requirement for itunes. The removal of a bloated inconvenient software from the picture, so we can just drag and drop files to a tablet/cell phone (even via wifi) from our computer, is a MASSIVE advantage for Android. too bad most people are too ignorant to realize this.

 

[mrpijey]

And you are too ignorant to realise that people may want to use iTunes. Don't assume that all people using it are dumb or ignorant, or you may very well top that list yourself.

First of all, you don't need to use iTunes anymore to manage your devices. By using iCloud you can sync and update your devices without ever plugging the device into the computer ever again. iTunes is good for other things too, I use it to sort my music, tag it, create playlists, organise everything and select what goes to what device I have. You can't do that with standard drag-drop.

I agree iTunes is a bloat on Windows and Apple should take care of it, and perhaps iTunes will be trimmed now that all parts are no longer needed, but iTunes on OSX works just fine, at least it does on mine.

I don't use iTunes because I am forced to, I use it because I choose to.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]zblade[/nom]@watchaAre you telling me that 36 million people has iphone 4S? I didn't know there was so many already sold. I am pretty sure you need iOS5 to use the apple iCloud and I am pretty sure if you don't have iOS5 you need "iTunes" to install it. So, unless you are the 1-2 million people who already has an iPhone 4S, you have to have iTunes until you upgrade to iOS5.Even if you have got iOS5, you will still need iTunes, iCloud will not update your iPhone. So unless you are planning to never update your iPhone you will need iTunes to update your iphone. Also, unless you are on a unlimited data plan, have fun downloading 16gb, 32gb or *gasp* 64gb of data via iCloud.[/citation]

zblade, if I was saying anything, it would be referring to iOS 5, since that is the OPERATING system which allows you to sync without iTunes, and yes, there are probably many more than 36 million iOS users. But that figure of 36 million didn't come from me - it came from the previous post which you should really read if you want to follow the conversation ;-)

Your figure of 1-2 million who own the iPhone 4S, is, incidentally (and irrelevantly) completely out, by the way, given how many millions they sold in the opening weekend. But lets not get distracted by your irrelevances.

Once you have made the update to iOS 5, whichever device you're using (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4) - you DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT need iTunes at all going forward, what you said is completely, utterly incorrect. It happens over the cloud - you can use your local Wifi. If you're upgrading from iOS 4 - which required iTunes, obviously you need to use it as a once and final time to get iOS 5, with all future updates happening automatically. The fact you can use Wifi, and the fact that I do in fact, have an unlimited data plan completely blow your '16, 32, 64 gb' argument out of the water, even before we explain the primary-school level reality that updates to the OS are never that big, or try to educate you that any cloud based service used on any phone has exactly the same consequence if you want to download updates or your own documents.

Uninformed people really amaze me at just how wrong they can be.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]Goldengoose[/nom]I was just reading CyberAngel's post and made me think... this is an Apple vs Android argument - where's watcha? Right on cue. On topic, i don't think a lack of differentiation is a problem. The average user hates change - i worked an xmas in Asda a few years back and the amount of complaints we'd get when we moved sections around was unreal. They didn't care we were putting different/better products/offers in front of them, they only cared about finding their usual items that they know. Same applies to average users.[/citation]

Glad I didn't disappoint ;-)

CyberAngel's post doesn't really contain anything other than over-simplifications and unfounded nonsense about the year 2015, so I didn't consider it worth replying to. I prefer to deal with facts, there are no facts about the future.

 

[torque79]

I use Windows Explorer to sort my music into folders for music types. When I feel like rock, I drag my rock folder over, etc. How can any software compete with that simplicity and ease of use? I use tag+rename for tagging when I feel like wasting some time, because all tagging seems to get me is pretty pictures displayed while I play music (which is not a visual medium). with Itunes you HAVE to tag every song, or itunes has no idea what genre it is, or you can't find it if you would categorize the genre differently.

I have not used itunes much, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but there is not even an option for viewing the music in its folder structure that you established, is there? Why is it so hard to include that?

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]everygamer[/nom]One last note, the fragmentation issue which Android had before, was never really much of an issue, it was just the hot topic that Apple liked to toss around about the product. You could always look up on the android development site the % market share of each version of android, and so long as you selected the minimum level the application was generally compatible with all newer versions without modification. So if you wrote for Android 2.0, it would generally work on 2.1,2.2,2.3,3.0,3.1,3.2,etc. It just would not work on anything below 2.0. The majority of the market 90%+ of devices are and have been running better than 2.0 for some time.[/citation]

The issue does not concern apps. The issue concerns performance on individual devices, being, as they are, not optimised for the operating system they are running on (and vice versa). This leads to inefficiencies and slower-than-optimal performance. You have to run better hardware to obtain the same performance and that damages battery life. It also means that there isn't just one 'release' of a new operating system. You have to find out if your 2 month old device is even going to have the update from your manufacturer, and then wait a couple of months (if you're lucky) to get the update.