Someone who can turn over design of both hardware and software to a single team with a clear vision and give that team the authority to make any and all of the tough decisions required.
So far I haven't seen this from design-by-committee Google or the-enterprise-doesn't-need-that RIM. WebOS seemed like the closest thing, but it was buggy and hampered by slow and buggy hardware.
Apple's competitors are right to imitate it, but they imitate the end result rather than the process that led to that result, and so they end up with a product lacking a clear vision and goal that can't compete.
That and they always aim at where Apple is now, not where they will be in a year.
I disagree that the tablets can only be created by someone who has both the hardware and software capabilities.
Sure Apple has these abilities, but so does RIM and HP, and that didn't lead to success.
The number two in the market is not an end-to-end solution provider, and Microsoft (who is not really in the market) has almost 5% share.
I agree with the 'skate to where the puck will be, not where it is' comment, but I think this market is too young to comment on those sorts of things. Though tablets are selling very well (ipads in particular), it's like looking at a two year old and a one year old and saying 'the two year old is talking and can run around, look at how poorly the one year old can talk, and it can't balance very well'. But really, but the time they are 4 and 5, the differences get to be much more minor.
Amazon!I think amazon knows what it takes to challenge the iPad. Their success with the Kindle shows that it can produce a quality hardware product. Also, the fact that they've said very little about their plans suggests that, unlike HP they aren't going to release it until it's ready. And when it's ready, just like with the Kindle, they'll promote it on the front page of their retail site and provided that it's a good product and it gets good reviews it will take off.
Agree that our Amazon overlords have what it takes to challenge Apple in the post-PC era. Bezos has always taken price-competition to the bleeding edge of what can be accomplished. He's willing to lose money on a product to build marketshare, which is what it will take to compete with Apple.
After spending more and more time with my iPad2 I've discovered the three most important things it has:
1) Lightweight.
2) Superfast startup.
3) Long battery life.
If PC manufacturers could make a convertible MacBook Air class machine for $600 that had 7 hour battery life (which is about what the MBA has now) and could start up as fast as an iPad then I think I probably would never use the iPad. That said, what I laid out I don't think is particularly easy for PCs and Windows.
There's the whole app store thing, but I find that I spend most of my time in email and the web. Some key apps are important, but frankly I think they'll be on Windows 8 pretty quickly -- especially given it will have an app store with probably 100M customers within a few weeks.
Before you start making assumption based on your limited exposure... Talk to friends and colleagues who have an iPad and ask them ... You may be surprised to find some of them are highly app dependent.
The convertible you're talking about is called the eeepad transformer. Is it selling well?
There are two main companies in the tablet market: Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Microsoft isn't in the tablet market, but has a developer network and enterprise traction the others could only dream of. Having seen Windows Phone 7 and some demos of Windows 8, I have to say that as a tablet OS it'll be a lot better than WebOS or QNX in terms of user experience, and going out on a limb would be surprised if it's worse than honeycomb. What will make a massive difference is the ability to retarget your Windows 8 code for desktop and tablet without having to do an awful lot of work.
The downside of this is that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Windows 8 tablet apps are ports from desktop apps that don't fully take advantage of the tablet's capabilities, or address it's drawbacks. However, for things like games it will be incredible - think about DirectX on a tablet with halfway to Xbox 360 level GPUs and XBLA ports.
Of course Amazon could compete, fairly or unfairly. To me it makes massive sense for them to remain focused on Kindle and not pollute their own market but to bring Kindle's price down to the point where it can be given away with Prime subscriptions, then go in for a tablet. Having an Amazon table compete with Kindle doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
Someone will produce a good product in the next 18 months. It's not rocket science, and there's an enormous pile of money. But adopting Apple's integrated model is a) not a sufficient condition and b) very threatening to existing business models. Apple's monopsonistic position w/r/t componentry is also going to mean that whoever intends to compete is not going to be able to do so on price, the traditional domain of the PC competitors.
I'd expect the best competitor to be a hail-mary type of move from a dying supergiant (Samsung?), and the most successful to be from Amazon.
I really thought HP was the company. They had engineering, channels, and logistics. If Microsoft would pull and XBox, they probably have a shot. I just don't understand their lack of desire to use WP7. Whoever is going to compete needs a wad of cash and their logistics done well.
The problem is it looks more and more like the tablet market is mirroring the the iPod market (most people bought iPods but some went for the more sophisticated competition).
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.7 ms ] threadSo far I haven't seen this from design-by-committee Google or the-enterprise-doesn't-need-that RIM. WebOS seemed like the closest thing, but it was buggy and hampered by slow and buggy hardware.
Apple's competitors are right to imitate it, but they imitate the end result rather than the process that led to that result, and so they end up with a product lacking a clear vision and goal that can't compete.
That and they always aim at where Apple is now, not where they will be in a year.
(Disclaimer: this comment written on an iPad.)
Sure Apple has these abilities, but so does RIM and HP, and that didn't lead to success.
The number two in the market is not an end-to-end solution provider, and Microsoft (who is not really in the market) has almost 5% share.
I agree with the 'skate to where the puck will be, not where it is' comment, but I think this market is too young to comment on those sorts of things. Though tablets are selling very well (ipads in particular), it's like looking at a two year old and a one year old and saying 'the two year old is talking and can run around, look at how poorly the one year old can talk, and it can't balance very well'. But really, but the time they are 4 and 5, the differences get to be much more minor.
After spending more and more time with my iPad2 I've discovered the three most important things it has:
1) Lightweight.
2) Superfast startup.
3) Long battery life.
If PC manufacturers could make a convertible MacBook Air class machine for $600 that had 7 hour battery life (which is about what the MBA has now) and could start up as fast as an iPad then I think I probably would never use the iPad. That said, what I laid out I don't think is particularly easy for PCs and Windows.
There's the whole app store thing, but I find that I spend most of my time in email and the web. Some key apps are important, but frankly I think they'll be on Windows 8 pretty quickly -- especially given it will have an app store with probably 100M customers within a few weeks.
The convertible you're talking about is called the eeepad transformer. Is it selling well?
Microsoft isn't in the tablet market, but has a developer network and enterprise traction the others could only dream of. Having seen Windows Phone 7 and some demos of Windows 8, I have to say that as a tablet OS it'll be a lot better than WebOS or QNX in terms of user experience, and going out on a limb would be surprised if it's worse than honeycomb. What will make a massive difference is the ability to retarget your Windows 8 code for desktop and tablet without having to do an awful lot of work.
The downside of this is that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Windows 8 tablet apps are ports from desktop apps that don't fully take advantage of the tablet's capabilities, or address it's drawbacks. However, for things like games it will be incredible - think about DirectX on a tablet with halfway to Xbox 360 level GPUs and XBLA ports.
Of course Amazon could compete, fairly or unfairly. To me it makes massive sense for them to remain focused on Kindle and not pollute their own market but to bring Kindle's price down to the point where it can be given away with Prime subscriptions, then go in for a tablet. Having an Amazon table compete with Kindle doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
I'd expect the best competitor to be a hail-mary type of move from a dying supergiant (Samsung?), and the most successful to be from Amazon.
Standard disclaimer: former AAPL employee.
The problem is it looks more and more like the tablet market is mirroring the the iPod market (most people bought iPods but some went for the more sophisticated competition).