The iPad's victory in defining the tablet: What it means
July 05, 2011
Apple's view of the tablet is now the accepted model, but one that most commodity competitors still haven't figured out
It's hard to believe that a year ago, the tech media was fixated on the future direction of the tablet, with many pooh-poohing the design of the Apple iPad as too simple and likely to fail for not having all the ports and connections that typified PC design. Every wannabe tablet maker that wasn't Apple showed off designs replete wih USB ports, HDMI ports, memory expansion card slots, and more.
The punditocracy predicted Apple's simplified and decidedly noncomputer design would end up at best a niche approach. They also criticized the decision not to support Adobe's (unstable) Flash as a decision that would keep customers away, and they suggested the iPad's iOS apps couldn't gain user adoption (consumer and business) because they weren't PC-like. A year later, Apple's iPad accounts for about 90 percent of tablet sales -- hardly a niche. It's popular among consumers as a gaming and entertainment platform, among businesses for sale force, field force, an all sorts of specialty uses, from reconnaissance monitoring on the battlefield to medical recordkeeping at the hospital bedside. (Even the pope uses an iPad.)
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But more interesting, its design approach is the one that most of its competitors are using. Take the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Hewlett-Packard TouchPad, for example. They have designs inspired -- and in the case of the Galaxy Tab, perhaps outright aped -- by the iPad, with a similar minimal set of ports and switches. The Research in Motion BlackBerry PlayBook is also stingy in the ports department, though unlike the iPad, Galaxy Tab, and TouchPad, it has an HDMI port. (The iPad and Galaxy Tab use their docking connector for video-out, requiring an adapter, whereas the TouchPad has no video-out capabilities at all, a decision that confuses simple with simplistic.)
The only other major tablet competitor is the Motorola Mobility Xoom, which has the bevy of ports and connectors that a PC-oriented user would want. (The mediocre Acer Iconia tablet also has PC-style port proliferation, but little market presence.) So, a year after the conventional wisdom said that successful tablets would need to be as port-happy as a netbook or laptop, it turns out such devices are the minority. What does this mean?
It means that users don't want tablets to be flat PCs. Consumers have accepted Apple's notion -- or maybe Apple simply discovered this latent belief and tapped into it -- that a tablet is a PC supplement, not a replacement. It's the "third device" -- a notion that ignited much debate within the punditocracy (as a valid question) when the iPad was first announced.
All those tablets, like the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and Dell Streak that slapped the smartphone version of the Android OS onto a netbook screen -- those weren't real tablets, and customers knew it. What was a real tablet? An iPad, because it was clearly different at so many levels.
Because a tablet was something new and different, it didn't have to be a PC. I believe that the tablets that came across as PCs actually turned off buyers, who after all could buy a netbook or small laptop for the price of a tablet. If they wanted a PC, they could get one. If they wanted a tablet, though, they wanted a tablet. Until recently, that meant only the iPad.
Let's face it, most of those "iPad killers" announced in spring 2010 were netbooks with the keyboard removed, thrown together out of existing components by PC makers who wanted to ride the iPad frenzy but avoid committing to any real work. They thought -- as is commonly the case among such electronics makers -- that users wouldn't know or care about the differences. After all, they make money selling PCs and cellphones that have at best cosmetic variations to a market that doesn't seem to notice.
July 05, 2011
Apple's view of the tablet is now the accepted model, but one that most commodity competitors still haven't figured out
A commodity play struggles in an unformed market
Ironically, the fact that tablets are new should have given Samung, HP, RIM, Acer, Dell, and everyone else a shot at standing out in a meaningful way, by taking advantage of the creative crucible that's forming the mobile market. Yet they didn't. I believe it's because these companies have largely lost their innovation and creative juices, and view the world as a sea of me-too products differentiated only by superficial attributes like color and the "message" of their marketing campaign.
It's true that PCs and cellphones are generic devices, so there's not much you can do to distinguish them other than quality and image. And even those aren't surefire strategies in a commodity world.
For example, higher quality means higher price, but the PC and cellphone industries have long been in a race to the bottom, and users have become unwilling to spend more than $50 on a cellphone or $600 on a PC that will need to be replaced every year or so rather than paying 50 percent more for an item that will last several years. Equipment makers thus can sell you more goods, so they happily support that mentality, no matter that most of it is junk. That's the mind-set that companies like HP, Samsung, and RIM are coming from, and yet they charge as much as Apple -- and it's one reason they're falling flat (HP and the Android makers) and even failing (RIM).
Image is a harder sell and usually settles into two camps. One camp involves tech specs, and sites like Gizmodo and Engadget blather on and on about the latest smartphone from HTC or "Sammy" (Samsung) because its processor is 5MHz faster than last week's model or its screen is 0.1 inch larger. These details don't matter. The other camp concerns itself with superficial fashion, such as having an "exclusive" white model at Sprint or removable faceplates at Verizon Wireless.
In the young tablet market, a lot of this superificial-image strategy falls on deaf ears. The PC and cellphone makers have long struggled with the image issue. A decade ago, Acer had very nice laptops that felt better in use, thanks to real ergonomic design. More recently, HP upped the design quotient on its laptops, without crossing the line into fashion for its own sake. But most electronics makers either produce bland boxes (like the PlayBook, Xoom, and TouchPad) or tastelessly styled boxes meant to get your attention in a crowded store but nothing you'd want to show off at work (fortunately, unlike the cellphone market, there aren't any of these yet in the tablet market).
The gold standard for industrial design of course is Apple, whose series of usually aluminum-skinned devices -- iPhones, iPads, MacBook Airs, and iMacs -- have become the icon that represents their entire class of product. It's the whole package, of course, that attracts and delights customers: hardware, software, and app/entertainment ecosystem (that is, iTunes).
Apple is also skilled at the fashion game, but it relies on having very few variations, so the attention is on Apple, not the carrier or store in which you bought the product. By having a few models that stick around for a year or more, the image takes hold in people's minds, unlike the flood of "designs" from everyone else.
That strategy puts competitors in a position of copying Apple's iconic products (as Dell has tried to do with its various MacBook Air-inspired laptops and Samsung has with its iPad-inspired Galaxy Tab 10.1) or trying to stake out a new look. If you ape Apple's designs, it begs the question for a buyer: Why not buy the real thing? Apple is the only PC maker whose sales are growing as a percentage of the market, despite its higher price -- and in the tablet market, its price is no higher. Indeed, why not buy the real thing?
Of course, if you strike out in your own design direction, you need to have a long-term design philosophy that resonates with users and works across products over a sustained period of time -- exactly the opposite mentality of "churn them out every few months" manufacturers. HP, HTC, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung seem to recognize the need but are stumbling with the execution.
July 05, 2011
Apple's view of the tablet is now the accepted model, but one that most commodity competitors still haven't figured out
Being a pioneer is very difficult, and creating a lasting hit product is an iffy proposition. Apple has had remarkable success in engineering a string of such hits. Everyone else tries to copy it, but does so superficially or imcompletely (the HP TouchPad is a good example) or tries to slap some superficial resembance of whatever Apple did onto the same old products (for example, the flat PCs that got all the buzz and none of the sales in 2010).
Two possible strategies: Innovate or make better copies
When you combine the commodity strategy of superficial image-making with the decision to make imperfect clones because either you don't know the difference or think your customer doesn't know the difference, you get products that scream either "so what?" or, worse, mediocrity.
The Android tablet makers took the low road in their initial Android 2.2-based offerings, so much so that Google has to restrict who could use the tablet-oriented Android 3.0 in an attempt to force quality. That did result in the respectable Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets, though both had execution stumbles that don't help make the case for buyers not already committed to the Android platform.
HP and RIM likewise delivered first-version products that stumbled through incomplete execution, undermining their appeal. Look at HP's new TouchPad or RIM's recent BlackBerry PlayBook. They offer less functionality in hardware and software than the iPad for all classes of users. Neither has the same level of consumer capabilities or business capabilities as the iPad 2 -- and HP's TouchPad has less than the iPad 2 in terms of enterprise security and management, despite HP's claim it is targeting the enterprise. Yet they cost the same as an iPad 2. And people are surprised that they've been panned by reviewers? Or that customers actually notice they're being sold an inferior product?
Executives at HP and RIM have made unconvincing statements about not intending to compete with Apple, but of course they are -- or should be. (Google and the Android tablet makers clearly have Apple in mind as the competition.) Apple now has the lion's share of the consumer tablet market, the lion's share of the business tablet market, and a strong presence in health care and government. Google seeks the consumer market, and Android 3.0 finally starts to address business management and security needs. In the fact of that dual competition, what unaddressed market is left for RIM and HP to aim for? Nothing.
Some suggest that these inferior products will appeal to the silent majority that hasn't yet "voted" yet by buying a tablet. Seriously? People will not buy a less capable product for the same price as a well-known superior one. Any company that expects that they will is mistreating its customers, and it deserves to fail. Likewise, any company that can't honestly judge the difference between its products and the market leader's deserves to go under.
Some apologists cite the "potential" in such destined-for-failure products. Sorry, but asking people to pay for potential is to overcharge them for what you actually delivered, especially when you promised the whole enchilada before you started selling it. For customers, it's at best a swallowed disappointment that will certainly not build loyalty. The U.S. car industry learned these lessons the hard way and has finally changed, with good results. Dell made the same mistakes, leading to a major fall from grace from which it may not recover.
Unfortunately, the "trust us, we'll get better" approach seems to be HP's strategy, based on WebOS chief John Rubinstein's defense of the TouchPad's universal poor reviews (InfoWorld, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Associated Press, PC Magazine, and so on). He compared WebOS 3.0 accurately to early versions of Mac OS X: flawed but promising. The difference is that even in the early 2000s Apple had a loyal fan base that kept buying, carrying Apple through as it focused on iPods and iTunes and kept improved Mac OS X to the point that, five years ago (with Tiger and then Leopard), it could attract new customers in its own right. Microsoft's Vista debacle also happened at a perfect time to get regular people to take a second look, and then came the iPhone.
HP has no such reservoir of passion to tap if its strategy is to take several years to get WebOS to live up to its very real potential; the pool of WebOS users from the Palm Pre smartphone is too tiny, and no one is passionate enough about HP PCs and printers, as solid as they are, to cut WebOS much slack. Look how the Palm faithful quickly abandoned the first WebOS just two years ago when it came in with more potential than execution. After all, there was a known winner (the iPhone and Android in the smartphone case, the iPad in the tablet case) to buy instead.
July 05, 2011
Apple's view of the tablet is now the accepted model, but one that most commodity competitors still haven't figured out
At least HP's strategy is more plausible -- even if like fighting with one hand tied behind its back -- than RIM's, which has been based on denying the fact that very market it is now selling into is not the same market it used to prosper in. So it delivers products conceived under self-delusion, and executed without conviction.
It's simple, really: Don't make subpar products. Instead, either make something meaningfully different or produce a demonstrably better copy. So far, only Google and Samsung have delivered on the "better copy" strategy. Motorola's Atrix was a laudable attempt to execute the "meaningfully different" strategy, but it came out half-baked. (I hope it tries again, as the rumors suggest it will.)
HP talks the talk in its vision of a WebOS ecosystem transcending mobile devices, PCs, and printers, but the first two pieces -- the TouchPad and a prototype smartphone -- don't walk the walk. So far, I don't see a sufficient base to support that ecosystem vision. And as noted, HP doesn't have enough true believers willing to take a chance on its nascent vision, as Apple had in 2007 with the iPhone -- and that Google had a year later with the first Android. That's why it's critical for HP to execute soon, to have a fighting chance for its "WebOS everywhere" strategy to succeed, before Apple's federated iOS, Mac OS X, and iTunes/iCloud strategy crowds out room for competitors.
Yes, it took the iPhone and Android several versions to get it right (Android is not quite there yet, but it's close), but they had the time when the market was truly new and unformed. The pace has picked up substantially, with the smartphone market all but a two-horse race now, and the tablet market seeing the second-generation iPad score with users everywhere as all its competitors debut unfinished first-genaration competitors. Execution is everything, if there's any hope in the mobile market not becoming a PC-like quasi-monopoly.
At some point, tablets will become as commoditized as PCs and cellphones, and users won't care about one model versus another. (Companies such as Apple of course will have moved onto the next Next Thing before that happens, leaving the commodity crumbs to the faceless manufacturers.)
Until then, the mobile industry -- especially the tablet makers -- are playing in a game whose rules Apple has set by virtue of the iPad's victory as the definition of what a tablet is. Unless Apple pulls a Microsoft and loses its product magic, or someone else redefines the concept in a compelling way for users that causes then to think different than the Apple vision, what the iPad's victory means is that other tablet makers need to actually deliver the real thing or at least a real thing. Apple's iPad is the real thing, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a shot at being a real thing. The rest? It's not likely they can unless they quickly match their promises with actual execution.
This article, "The iPad's victory in defining the tablet: What it means," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman's Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen's mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
