The tablet market has been a one-horse race to date, with Apple so far in front of competitors it is difficult to imagine a truly competitive market, especially in the developed world. Lacking in essential applications and features, what has been delivered to the marketplace thus far hasn’t really been viewed as a serious alternative to the Apple iPad.
From Galaxy Tab to Xoom, none of the alternatives have made much a progress in stopping the momentum of Apple in the market. Much of the early stumbles have been linked to the immaturity of the respective operating systems though and the hardware elements have hinted at the exciting future for this rapidly growing market, says iSuppli in a new report.
While Android 3.0, the first tablet specific Android OS addressed many of these issues, vendors and developers believe that before the OS can be a serious contender to Apple, further improvements are needed. Similar improvements will be required for QNX if it is to move beyond its core potential market of Blackberry smartphone users.
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The U.S. market is where much of the tablet activity is currently concentrated, with a rapidly expanding mix of offerings across multiple operating systems, sizes, and brands. In the race to build share vendors are experimenting with features, channel strategy, and pricing, striving to find the right mix for success.
Apple will be expected to ride the premium side of the tablet market especially in the US and Western Europe. But that will change as time goes on. However, because of the disparity of the contents and ingredients in the OS ecosystem, when the competitors get the hardware right, they have to get the apps right. Apple has built the best Apps war chest that challenging them there could be difficult.
Yet, you never say Never, but anyone that will do this has to step us the game. Ingredients and contents will be the key to taking that top spot from Apple. Anything less will not work. You need to design good hardware and then get the industry to built solid contents within it.
