Submitted by “I’ve been a fan of Velocity Micro for years. Velocity Micro is a small system manufacturer that’s been around for years, and you always have to root for the small guy. The company has announced that they will be releasing three new Android powered tablets this year to compete with hardware from heavyweights like iPad, Dell, and HP. Here’s an early look at what to expect from the upcoming hardware.”
It feels like the industry is just going through the motions, wandering from one fad to the next but never quite getting it. They went through the netbook craze and now they’re all eager to get on the tablet bandwagon, but for all the wrong reasons.
All this time they are looking at Apple and trying to copy its ideas. Apple does a tablet, they try one too. Apple does the AppStore, everybody’s doing it too. But just because you copy some ideas doesn’t mean you’ll get the same.
Apple has created a particular position for themselves. They create and sell expensive, tightly integrated and heavily controlled devices with great out of the box experience. They also have an entire ecosystem (the iTunes Store, the AppStore) to wrap around their devices. They also have iOS and OS X. Last but not least, Apple is targeting the top 10% of the customers, spending-wise.
These other manufacturers try to target the same “cream off the top” public, but they simply don’t have what it takes to offer the same experience. You need retail stores, your own OS and your own OS experts, tightly integrated hardware, R&D, a supporting ecosystem, a long term plan and so on.
What’s worse, in mimicking Apple they completely ignore the long tail, the other 90% of the customers whose willingness or ability to spend the same drops off sharply on the graph curve, but who put together could offer an income at least as rewarding.
I see no vision, no grand plan from any of them. I sincerely doubt any of them will manage to replicate Apple’s success in the random manner they go about things. But we could at least hope they will assemble the right pieces and at least give us, those 90% slobs, what we want.
We want 10″ netbooks for under 200$, with WiFi, Bluetooth, webcam, USB, SD reader, 2.5″ HDD, extra-long battery life, ARM processor and running Linux (no Windows tax, see).
Why try to create your own AppStore when the original AppStore (Linux repos) is available for free? Why use an OS made for smartphones when you can have a desktop OS (like Ubuntu Netbook Remix)? Why go for tablets, strange devices in a strange new niche market, the bastard child of Apple’s narrow vision and their feud with Flash, when you can flood the market with affordable netbooks, a format that everybody understands and wants?
I wish they’d all stop chasing Apple’s tail and have some ideas of their own. Or at least see what’s in front of their noses.
Edited 2010-07-15 19:05 UTC
Did you read the TFA? These guys are giving us exactly what we need – cheap tablets.
I can sacrifice extra-long battery life if it makes a cheaper & lighter device. 6 hours would be fine.
Netbook market is flooded already by established players. Tablets are the gold rush.
I don’t think these guys are following Apple’s tail. They just see that a new market has been created, hardware to enter that market is available for a low price, and that this is their window to make the move.
I applaud these guys, as opposed to the cowards at HTC:
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/10/htc-is-not-jumping-into-t…
You should re-read HTC’s statement on tablets:
Apple has all that. They’re the outstanding exception.
Who wants on screen keyboard and a touchscreen interface-only? Please raise your hand. I don’t. I don’t think many people want them. They can live with them if given compelling reasons, and the iPad makes a compelling argument (sort of). But most of the other tables don’t.
Cheap is only part of it (and that’s debatable, given the low-end specs).
I’m confused by the Velocity Micro tablet. I dunno what it is or what I’d use it for. For an eReader, it’s too expensive. For an all-purpose device it’s too devoid of features and juice. It’s bigger than an iPod Touch or a smartphone so I can’t keep it in my pocket, and has no GSM/CDMA ability.
Far from it. Please re-read my ideal netbook specs above. What you’ll find on the market today for $300 runs Windows, does not have outstanding battery life, uses an Atom CPU and is often missing specs here and there, such as no card reader, no webcam, trimmed down WiFi capabilities.
There’s no gold if nobody’s buying them. As for the rush, let me tell you something about rushing into new technology. Doing it first means nothing. Apple didn’t do tablets first. You have to do it right. Otherwise you’re just being a Guinea Pig for the other, smarter companies (like HTC), who wait and see what happens to the early adopters.
$150 is something you find amid your pocket lint on sunday afternoon. GSM is something you do by plugging in your phone through USB and tethering the device.
Believe me, people will by heavily into the tablet form factor. Tablet is a device people with money don’t have already (as opposed to pc, laptop, netbook, smartphone).
Apple was the first to do it right. Now other guys know how to do it right as well.
Wait-and-see may work for some companies – but for others, now is the time to take your chances & make tons of money by having the guts to press on; especially if you got the right engineering resources in place. HTC clearly hasn’t.
Of course, Apple did not invent the finger touch tablet nor did Apple invent the netbook.
You forgot…the PC market flourished in the late 80s/early 90s at the expense of apple who became a 2-3% niche player. That can easily happen again.
Which means fewer apps, lower quality apps, less interest in developping/using those apps, since these tablets will only be available on a subset of Android devices.
Either Google needs to loosen up access to the Android Market, or manufacturers have to create tablets that quality for the Market.
THEN Android tablets can start benefitting from the Android ecosystem…