Last night I visited my uncle, a 50 year old rancher in Eastern Colorado. He wanted to show me videos of him calf-roping with a rodeo celebrity. I was very surprised when he brought out a Samsung Galaxy Tablet. This man is extremely computer illiterate and prides himself on ignoring modern technology. But wow did he love that tablet. He used it for everything (doesn't own a computer).
This incident convinced me that non-iPad tablets have a fighting chance. I'd like to see this exercise done again in one year. I believe non-iPads will gain more traction.
The frustrating thing with all the "sales" numbers I've seen for Android based tablets is that they all seem to mention the units _shipped_, but not necessarily sold to consumers. The original article quoted by BGR still says "shipments". Is this just a semantic difference and those really are sales? I honestly can't figure that out.
And do those numbers account for customer returns as well, since there do seem to be a certain amount of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Android tablet returns are abnormally high.
Furthermore, there also seems to be a large quantity of super-cheap, and super-terrible Android based tablets [1]. Are those counted in the same numbers as better ones like the Xoom and Samsung Tabs?
I'm not trying to be snarky, just genuinely curious if people are actually BUYING Android tablets (and keeping them).
The problem is that in general people don't really know sales, except in limited instances. The main one being when stores can't keep items on the shelves so sales to consumers equals shipments (approximately). That's why MS knew how many Kinects sold over the holidays.
But in general there's no way for OEMs to know exactly how many Android tablets are in consumer hands.
Gruber bases his analysis on Google's biweekly publication of Android version distributions, observing that for the two weeks ending July 14th, only 0.9% of 'live' Android installations were running Honeycomb (Android 3.0 or 3.1). This is somewhat disingenuous, since the vast majority of Android apps run fine on earlier versions (as used mainly on smartphones).
But let's go with his Honeycomb filter anyway; the latest update from Google (August 1) shows Android 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 enjoying market shares of 0.4%, 0.7%, and 0.2% respectively, for a total of 1.3%. A 44% increase in Honeycomb tablet shipments in the space of 2 weeks seems somewhat unlikely, but a portion of that may result from 'back to school' sales; that's part of why I bought mine.
The market is going to look very different in a year. I consider myself and Android/Google fanboy, but when Motorola launched their Xoom last winter I rolled my eyes at the absurdly high price along with everyone else. It seems to me that the Honeycomb platform didn't get started properly until April, when Acer and Asus lunched products that competed with the Ipad around the $500 price point. Since then Samsung and Lenovo have released their own Honeycomb devices, and Asus claims to be selling 400k/mo. of its Eee tablet. Amazon's two forthcoming tablets are likely to sell well too, if the success of the Kindle is any guide. I see a 4:1 use ratio between iPad and equivalent Android tablets this time next year, maybe even 3:1 if Android products cluster around the $400 price point. It took Android on smartphones a few years to achieve market parity with Apple's offering.
As well as being good for consumers, this is good news for developers too. From never buying any apps for my Android phone, I'm about to drop $20 today (VPN/remote desktop, pro PDF tool, sketchbook). Although I only got the tablet last Monday (an Eee btw), it's already drastically altering my use patterns, and I feel safe in finally calling the death of the conventional PC. I find the device infinitely more satisfying and productive to use than any laptop I have ever owned, and can plug in a keyboard dock if I need to do a lot of typing.
RIM and HP are the big losers here; I can't see any reason to buy into the Blackberry OS or WebOS from either a consumer or business point of view.
There are probably more sales of non-Honeycomb tablets than Honeycomb ones so far. Non-Honeycomb tablets are still being launched right now, too. So yes saying all Android tablets are the ones with Honeycomb is definitely disingenuous.
There's a difference between units sold to retail, units sold to customers, and units that are actually in use by customers. I'm also curious if they count Nooks, which are not always used as tablets even though they run Android.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for non-Apple tablets. But in reality, there don't seem to be that many in the wld yet.
I'm not saying the article is credible, I'm saying Daring Fireball isn't.
I think it's sad what Marco's rooting interest are here. It's not enough that the iPad succeed. It's competitors have to fail for him to be happy.
If the tablet really is the future of personal computing then there will be more than 1 successful platform. If not, then maybe not. Right now Best Buy is betting their business on the former. If you walk into a Best Buy they have a section for tablets equal to their section of laptops (and larger than their 1 row of desktops). Maybe Best Buy is wrong and they'll go back to a big area of laptops again. Or maybe Marco, Gruber, etc. will find a new data point that they can point to as being all-important.
I think Best Buy are making the right call. I have wanted a tablet as my general-purpose computer for years, and had been hugely frustrated at the high price and low uptake of Windows models. When the iPad was announced I immediately hailed it as a game-changer (and am still waiting for another HN reader to make good on his $100 bet that it would go nowhere). I'm thrilled to see worthwhile competitors emerging this summer; last time computers were this interesting was maybe 15 years ago.
I think it's sad what Marco's rooting interest are here. It's not enough that the iPad succeed. It's competitors have to fail for him to be happy. If the tablet really is the future of personal computing then there will be more than 1 successful platform.
Marco and Gruber would be fine with the two successful platforms being iOS and WP7. They honestly believe that the mandatory walled garden model with heavily limited options is better for most customers, and that "open" platforms such as Android (and Mac OS X) are fundamentally incapable of providing the same level of user experience. I disagree completely, but their position is more nuanced than just Apple fanboyism.
Not including the Nook Color and other non-Honeycomb Android tablets (roughly estimated around 3 million and 4 million respectively, IIRC) distorts the results substantially, IMO.
Especially in a gaming context, my working definition of a tablet is:
1. Does it have a touchscreen?
2. Is it bigger than a smartphone?
3. Can it play Angry Birds? (a)
The Nook Color and most other non-Honeycomb Android tablets easily qualify on all 3 points.
This graph is meaningless. A lot of the game consoles probably had a lifespan of at least one year (probably more). The Android tablets and the Playbook are at most half a year old.
Knowing this it does not seem fair to me to compare their total sales figures.
The Nintendo Virtual Boy "was released on July 21, 1995 [... and Nintendo] discontinued it the following year"
... so no - it really was a flop that sold more units than the playbook (to date).
The tech may be similar, but they're fundamentally different markets. Almost everybody needs a phone, but tablets are (currently) luxury items; and carriers play a far smaller role in tablets, and often none at all.
This data would be more interesting if put into context with the category leaders at the time. The ratio of lead sales console vs "obscure" console would be nice. Even better if you can normalize time (avg monthly ratio) or plot the ratio vs launch month. That would give some idea of the non-lead tablets are on a similar sales trajectory as non-lead consoles.
Some of them don't really fit in a given generation (the 32X was an addon to the Mega Drive/Genesis released in the later years of the console, the Mega-CD was an other addon released earlier to equip the Mega Drive against the just-released TurboGraphx16-CD, the VirtualBoy did not really fit in any category).
* The Jaguar was a 5th gen console, the generation leader was the PlayStation with ~100 million units sold. The Jaguar sold under 250000, or 0.25% of the leader, other major entrants of the generation were the N64 (33m) and the Saturn (10m)
* The CD-i was something of a hybrid console/media player (only time I saw it used was a driving school, fwiw), it's nominally part of the 4th generation whose leader was the Super Famicom/Super NES. The CD-i sold ~500k units, the SNES sold 50 million. 1%. The the other major entrant of the generation was the Mega Drive/Genesis with 40m.
* The 3DO Interactive was a 5th gen console, sold 2 million, 2% of leader (PS)
* The TurboGraphx16, I think calling it a failure is a bit of a stretch: it was a 4th gen console and sold 10m units (~20% of generation leader) while it was pretty much only available in japan, where it performed quite well indeed. Comparatively the Saturn bombed much harder (and the Dreamcast did even worse, compared to its generation leader)
I think your logic is somewhat off, as you are considering playstation 1,2,3 to be different, while iPhone 1,2,3,4 are in the same bucket. Also consoles are generally a one per household thing. Phones aren't.
You make a good point, but PS1, PS2, and PS3 had different developer and third party ecosystems, and iPhone 2/3/4 do not, to the same extent. There's a confounding happening here to be sure, but it would not be accurate to square iPhone 4 off against PS3, iPhone 3G/3GS against PS2, etc.
While true on the Playstation platforms, the view of the iPhone ecosystem is extremely inflated. Either all iPhones offer a similar experience across the entire platform or not.
Most of my friends, with iPhones, have upgraded with each iteration of the iPhone. They would each be counted three times, were we to consider each iPhone iteration a separate platform. However, if we're being honest about the experience being compatible across the iterations, is the triple dipping really fair? Frankly, most of the same friends upgraded because they could (afford to) and need shiny objects and that phone-dropped blemish gone -- "The Apple Way."
I think you were going there, but I had to spell it out.
That's fair, but I don't have a tone on that pulse -- guesstimate is they upgraded their wive's iPhones or have no interest/knowledge/time to make a few bucks on eBay. However, the premise of the argument is that there is too much grey area. It is disingenuous to rank all iPhone sales against a gaming platform; anecdotal results would lead me to believe a majority of smartphones are not used as gaming devices.
It wouldn't be too far off - for example the PS2 can play PS1 games, and PS3 could play PS2 games (for a short while). But the first iPhone came out after the PS3 was released, and there have been no new standalone console generations since. (There were several Nintendos however, so those comparisons hold.)
Comparing portables to standalone consoles is problematic anyway, for various reasons. Not least, more than one person can play on a standalone at once...
iPhone 1/2/3/4 are evolutionary devices, better hardware of same kind, same software, same software ecosystem. PS1/2/3 are different hardware architectures, different software and different software ecosystems.
Can you run the latest OS on an iPhone 1? Can you run the original OS on an iPhone 4?
I can see how they're not as different as PS 1/2/3 but they're definitely not the same device. Steve Jobs would slap anyone who dared say that iPhone1 and iPhone4 were "hardware upgrades with same software and software ecosystem"
You can't run the latest OS on an iPhone 1 because that would hurt Apple sales so they won't let you. There's no fundamental technological reason for why this can't be done. Same for the other way around. iPhone of all generations share the exact same hardware architecture, they are no more different than a PC with i7 and a PC with Core2Duo.
Different generations of consoles are completely different hardware architectures completely incompatible.
I am confused... the point is made more clear by comparing game consoles to phones? How? Not to mention you're comparing 4 iterations of the iPhone to arbitrary console life cycles.
If we're talking about pure numbers here, there are more substantive comparisons to be made.
You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.
Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible.
You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.
A valid point, and I think when you're talking about today's hand-held gaming devices vs today's mobile phones, you've got a meaningful comparison because the consumer can reasonably substitute a phone for a PSP or similar, but I'm not sure what is meaningful about comparing the lifetime of Apple's work in the mobile sector to one or two iterations of various gaming consoles across various timeframes.
Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software
Not true in many cases. Consider that the first two iPhone models can't even run fully featured firmware because of hardware limitations.
Listen to Marco's podcast sometime when he talks about the support burden for Instapaper owing to older iPhones. Sure, you can't bring an iPhone 1 up to iOS 4, but he can't cut loose all the old iPhones either.
Aren't phones effectively on a 2-3 year subsidized schedule anyways? I know a minority of people do buy unsubsidized phones at full price, but that minority is tiny.
(Finally, remember we're talking iPads here, not iPhones. Two very different markets.)
was asking because the parent wrote "Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible." I didnt believe that statement :)
The current dominant thinking (at least on HN, fed by sites like DaringFireball, Marco or Asymco) is that the iPad super-special and will be the dominant platform because it's everything everyone would ever want. You may have seen the mantra "There is no tablet market, but there is an iPad market"
I welcome everyone to put their money where their mouth is, I can always use free money :)
martythemaniak is claiming that the dominant thinking about the iPad/tablet is wrong. Pointing out that the Wall Street Journal has repeated the dominant thinking by reporting someone's opinion doesn't actually address the charge.
It actually reinforces the part of martythemaniak's claim about the thinking being dominant. Many who say thing like "There is no tablet market, but there is an iPad market." also claim that the conventional wisdom is that Android tables vs iPad will be a repeat of Android phones vs iPhone, so I think that is an interesting detail.
I'm sorry, but "it's wrong because a lot of people think it" is plainly stupid, and no better than "it's wrong because fanboys think it". I am only pointing out that it isn't just supposedly fanboy sources stating it.
Insinuating that I think the WSJ could not possibly be wrong and therefore it is right is simple dickery. The point is that the source is credible in a way that some people (certainly martythemaniak) don't think Gruber, et al. are.
So... a company's line of tablets that's been on the market for 16 months has sold more total units than a company's line of tablets that's been on the market for 6?
It's not clear to me why some people seem so keen on seeing a single tablet seller. History has shown numerous times how monopolies are bad and how competition benefits the consumer immensely.
The tablet market is new and still mostly luxury. I wouldn't place any bets right now, even considering Apple's head start.
From a "units" perspective it's interesting to see the comparison. However, I think the article presents a false comparison between apples and oranges.
Gaming consoles appeal to a limited section of the market and will generally ship less units than a mobile device. For instance, in a family of four, you might find four cellphones and only one gaming system. Simple fact. I think a more interesting comparison would be between tablet sales and mobile gaming device sales.
I think the point of the comparison is basically: here's a bunch of console you probably never heard about. They flopped.
That's exactly my point. "Here's a bunch of [insert failed consumer electronic] you've never heard of without regard for disparate product life cycles or market environments". The data points are interchangeable so long as they follow the guideline of "consumer electronic that existed at some point in time and didn't sell well"
They aren't random consumer electronic devices; they're consoles, the market for which has similarities to the "tablet" market in that they're ancillary devices for consumers with winner-take-most developer ecosystems.
Then you don't see the value in comparing comparable markets from the history of computing to a modern market; you don't think history in any way resembles itself. Which is fine, but I think that perspective is a bit of an outlier.
you don't think history in any way resembles itself.
I wouldn't go that far, but I think in this case, the markets are so radically different that it's difficult to take a lot of meaning from the comparisons.
So far, the non-IOS tablets are selling better than the arguably obscure Atari 2600 did in it's first two years, but if we match the numbers today, the Atari 2600 has sold more units than both iPad models combined. Perhaps Atari is simply an outlier, but throw it up on the graph and it would substantially change the impression that people take away from the image, as well as highlight the absurdity I see in the comparison.
No, you said adding the iPad sales to the graph would make it meaningful. What meaning would it mean to the graph? It might change the meaning of the graph to "the iPad sells well, other tablets don't" but then the consoles included are meaningless.
The point of the graph is "these tablets don't sell for shit, here, compare to sales of stuff which didn't sell for shit either".
I was being sarcastic when I said that adding iPad sales to the graph would make it meaningful since a comparison of 2 to 30 doesn't require a graph for digestion.
The point of the graph is "these tablets don't sell for shit, here, compare to sales of stuff which didn't sell for shit either"
Yes, a point that remains lost on me considering you could stack this year's tablets up against a myriad of 20 year old devices and make an equally meaningless comparison.
This incident convinced me that non-iPad tablets have a fighting chance. I'd like to see this exercise done again in one year. I believe non-iPads will gain more traction.