Opinion A tablet in the haystack
While the world was waiting to see more of the Motorola Xoom and BlackBerry Playbook,they ended up getting a look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1,HTC Flyer and HP TouchPad among a host of others.
If the CSE in Las Vegas in January gave us a preview of what was going to happen in the tablet space this year,the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week showed us this was going to be one long story.
While the world was waiting to see more of the Motorola Xoom and BlackBerry Playbook,they ended up getting a look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1,HTC Flyer and HP TouchPad among a host of others. So instead of making sense of what the new tablets had up their sleeves,tech journalists from around the world were left figure out how many tablets were expected to launch this year. It seems no one has yet figured that out.
But one thing that is certain is that there is not enough space for all these players to survive together. Even their very existence is dependent on breaking Apples stranglehold on the segment. And if the new tablets manage to break iPads monopoly they have find their own unique selling propositions with which they will woo customers.
As of now the latter seems a difficult task with hardly anything differentiating the tablets. Initially,size was the key,as Samsung Tab and Dell Streak came up with tablets much smaller than the iPad. But since then there are at least a couple of tablets in each inch-segment.
Then everyone started looking at the operating system to play with. While most tablets still run on,or are planning to use,different versions of the Android,the companies that are willing to think different are also getting the eyeballs. There is the Playbook with the BlackBerry Tablet OS and HP TouchPad with the WebOS made popular by Palm Pre,both much different in their look and feel when compared to the Androids. Then there are rumours that Dell is working on a tablet,code-named Peju,which will run on Windows,maybe Windows 8.
To add to the fun,Intel showcased a tablet running on MeeGo,the OS it created in partnership with Nokia,since abandoned by the latter. With Nokia yet to announce a venture into the tablet space — an inevitability if you ask me — Intel seems to have a card up its sleeve to get back at its former ally.
But the fact remains that after maybe a year of churning we will get to see who the real tablet players are,after the inconsequential ones fall by the wayside. I have a hunch that we have not yet seen the real benchmark for a good tablet,and too that seems to be still in the pipeline.
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