Android Blog

Will Android-Based Tablets Ever Be Able to Seriously Compete with the iPad?

The pioneers get both the flowers and the arrows.

According to estimates by Deutsche Bank, sales for Motorola's Xoom, one of the first tablets to compete with the iPad, are bleak. The company has only managed to sell 100,000 of their tablet PCs thus far. That's probably the same number of people who bought iPads in the first few days after it was released.

So far, Android phones have been able to compete with the iPhone partially because of their low prices. But when an Android tablet costs a whopping $799, like the Xoom, it means the product has to compete both with both other small laptops and the iPad. That's just too much competition for an unproven piece of hardware.

When the Xoom was first released, reviewers were impressed by its technical prowess. To some reviewers it felt like someone had taken a powerful notebook computer, sheared off the keyboard and replaced it with a touch interface. But the Zoom didn't have the ability to use its own SD card slot, and only a few applications took advantage of its larger display.

There is certainly a product to be made to compete with Apple's iPad. I've always thought the iPad felt like an overgrown iPod, not a computer with the kind of capabilities that could ever replace my laptop.

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