Tablet market is growing

Samsung Galaxy Tab | Photo: GlobeandMail.com

Samsung is coming out with its new tablet called Galaxy Tab, which runs on the Android operating system. Some sources say the device could cost as much as $1,200, which would make it much more expensive than even the top-grade iPad model (64GB, 3G + Wi-Fi).

This strikes me as somewhat odd, because the Galaxy has a much smaller screen than the iPad and won’t be able to give people what they really want – Apple apps. I don’t doubt that there is a huge market for tablet computers in the near future, and the market can easily absorb several brands and models. But only Apple has the content that people are interested in. A recent poll in Europe found that most people buy the iPad to read newspapers. Reading e-books or tweeting, for example, are much further down the list.

Users of the iPad already know about the kind of “magic” that has been cast on newspapers and their future. Looking at the professional apps for the Times or Wall Street Journal, everyone agrees that this is what a newspaper should look like on an electronic device – i.e., structured, page by page, like a real newspaper – and not the chaotic “all-over-the-place” feel of a newspaper website inside a browser.

The Times recently polled its iPad readers, and one question actually focused on that point: “Do you enjoy reading the paper in the app from page to page as you would with a printed newspaper?” My answer to that was a resounding YES. I have never much cared for the websites of newspapers, because it’s impossible to read the entire content from page 1 to the last page. On the iPad this has now become possible, and this is why a lot of people who gave up on newspapers a long time ago are now “born-again newspaper aficionados”.

Of course, Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on things like that, but the fact remains that the necessary apps for newspapers and magazines are currently only available in the Apple format from the company’s own apps store. There are now around 300,000 apps, and each day hundreds, if not thousands, more are uploaded. By comparison, Android has just around 100,000, but I have yet to find the equivalent apps for newspapers (e.g., Press Reader/PressDisplay.com) in the Android store. And as one Globe and Mail reviewer recently pointed out, the number of available Android apps doesn’t mean much, because most of them are rubbish anyway. What is more, Google doesn’t properly vet new apps before they’re released to the public, unlike Apple, which means Android users run a very high risk of “catching” malicious software and viruses with the Android apps they download. As such, there is nothing that would entice me to buy an Android tablet as a secondary tablet, let alone to switch my allegiance from Apple.

One day in the future I could see myself purchase one of the competing tablet products, because at some point the various brands will differentiate themselves by offering apps or features that none of the others can provide. So, to do one thing, you use your iPad, and for something else, you turn to your Android (or whatever)-based tablet. Essentially, this is what I’m doing now, splitting my e-reading between the iPad and the Kindle DX. But I’d have to really think twice about buying an Android system unless Google changed its philosophy and implemented strict quality control on all apps before they were published – and they would have to offer a full range of newspaper and magazine apps.

Tagged as: Android, iPad, Tablet