Recipe for Success in the Tablet Market

Google Tablet: A very good thing done the right way

Well, the guys over at Tech Republic got me going again. Now, usually I don't like James Kendrick and I cannot say that I like this article either. This was my response...

You're looking at the wrong model again.

Kindle isn't the target. Neither is the iPad. They should take a page from the Galaxy Note. Now, I can hear you groaning and rolling your eyes, and you'd be right if I thought the Galaxy Note was the target...but it isn't.

Why did the iPad succeed? Because there wasn't anything like it.

Why did the Kindle succeed? Because there wasn't anything like it.

Why did the Galaxy Note succeed? Because there wasn't anything like it.

Do you see the pattern?

Samsung copies the iPad, but with a different aspect ratio and Android as the OS (Galaxy Tab 10.1), and????? It failed. Ditto for Asus, Acer, Dell (even if theirs was 7"). They were all designed to lure users away from Apple.

Kindle did things differently and it succeeded. It's aimed at different users, someone who wants something Apple doesn't really offer...no they don't, get over it.

Galaxy Note did things differently, and it succeeded. It ran different ads. It talked about what it does that the others don't. Not what features they have that others don't, but what you can do with a stylus and their new software. Big Hit.

Phones are a different market, and you cannot compare the success of Android in the phone market to the tablet market. Everyone carries a phone. Every gets a new phone every couple of years. It's a repeat market that has already been built, though it is still expanding.

Tablets aren't going to be subsidized. The iPad isn't. The Kindle isn't. Okay, so to a certain extend both may be by the expectation of future sales, but they are not directly subsidized by two year contracts. Kindle comes closes, but you are not required to be a Prime customer to buy one. Yes, people do buy unsubsidized phones, but what percentage of the market? The main phone market is subsidized.

Tablets are never going to be big as a subsidized product, because you cannot charge for the phone contract, only the data.

Tablets have to stand on their own, and so far the biggest problem for Android tablets is that the iPad does it better, and it doesn't cost that much more. There is no firm value proposition to the present tablet market. If I take your suggestion of tying the tablet to Google services as the suggestion of giving it a strong value proposition, then you are at least partially right, but when that set of Services isn't really better than Apple's, of Amazon's, then it just doesn't wash. iPad and Kindle will still beat them.

As the iPad did, and still does, and as the Kindle Fire did, and as the Galaxy Note did, they need to find something that the Google tablet will do better than any other tablet, and sell that as the important feature people should want.

So far, all the Android Tablets are trying to be a better, or cheaper iPad...and they are failing. You are suggesting that Google build a better Kindle Fire...and that is going to fail as well, because the Google services aren't as good and don't have the following of the Amazon Services. And what I was trying to say earlier is that they shouldn't try to build a better Galaxy Note. Each of these successes has its own equivalent of the killer app. Google needs to find theirs.