Alternative Tablets: The Next Big Thing Or Dead On Arrival?

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(Free-Press-Release.com) July 13, 2011 -- I suppose they all thought they were all getting in on a gold rush of sorts. But the sameness of the various offerings has caused many a consumer’s eyes to glaze over in the aisles of Best Buy. It’s no wonder they end up going with an iPad when the other options try so pathetically to get consumers to care about trivial differences in hardware, and make vague promises of improvements coming down the line, over which they have no real control.

At the same time, a few companies have been bold enough to depart from the pattern enough that you can distinguish their product without squinting. But are these non-traditional designs going to galvanize an indifferent market or are they too much, too early?

Convertible Tablets

just read a fairly reasonable article suggesting that these convertibles, like Asus’ Transformer, are going to be a big hit. The main points, for those too busy to look: they’re getting slim enough to be worth a look, the software is maturing to the point where it doesn’t feel sloppy, and there is an increasing number of people who can’t decide between a tablet and a laptop. Naturally they’ll choose the hybrid.

While there’s something to this, I don’t think it points to adoption at large. If you look at usage patterns of things like the iPad, you see a huge amount of browsing, video-watching, casual gaming. Email, too, but as typing on touch-keyboards is a pain, it’s mainly checking, nothing serious. The point is that even the early adopters (and make no mistake, even the 20 million iPads sold are to early adopters) are interested in consumption, not creation. The tablet is a window to content, but it’s one-way glass.

True, convertible tablets make it easier to type. But compared to any $500 laptop, a tablet isn’t going to perform nearly as many tasks that make the keyboard necessary. You’ll be able to do email better, and type web addresses more quickly, but is there enterprise software, financial management stuff, serious word processing and editing to be done on them? Not yet, and I suspect not for some time.

Windows 8 is the biggest arrow in the convertibles’ quiver. A lot depends on Microsoft making that extremely promising start turn into something people really want to use. A rich interface with the ease of use of a tablet plus the power of a full-on PC isn’t an easy task, but Microsoft realizes they need this one to be a hit or they’re out of the tablet game forever. If convertibles become popular, it won’t be because of the reasons suggested above, but because Microsoft made them popular. Because Apple, Google, Asus, Acer, and the rest sure as hell aren’t going to do it.

Dual-screen Tablets

Courier, Courier, where art thou, Courier? O most promising of pre-iPad devices. If you’re reading this, you probably remember Microsoft’s star-cross’d Courier project, which broke out of its incubator early and was the darling of the blogging world for a few months. It showed imagination, good design, and a willingness to take risks. So it came as no surprise when it was peremptorily buried by Ballmer. Since then, we haven’t really had a dual-screen tablet to get excited about — but that doesn’t mean the form factor is fundamentally barren.

The Kno springs to mind as an example of something done partially right. Intended as a replacement for bulky, heavy, expensive textbooks, the Kno is a bulky, heavy, expensive tablet. But I don’t do it justice: it really is a very savvy piece of work and, though its size and cost ended up killing it, shows that a ground-up approach and unique brand can do wonders for product visibility. An on-stage demo at TechCrunch Disrupt helps as well. But if anything, it was always type of device that sells units in the tens of thousands, not the tens of millions.

More recently we’ve seen some rather strange designs like the Iconia Touchbook, which end up being more like the worst of both worlds. Sony’s S2, which we just had a hands-on with today, seems more promising, but we’ll look more closely at it in the gaming tablets section below.

The issue here seems to be a technical one rather than a design one. The bezel width, weight, and cost of two separate displays mean that the tablet wouldn’t be able to compete in form or price. Plus, the lack of optimized apps for two screens means the benefits are extremely limited. When the technical issues are solved and a thin, foldable device no longer makes unacceptable compromises, then the software will follow. Until then, no chance.

Companies have been going out of their way to laud the gaming prowess of their particular brand. Never mind that they’re all just shilling for Nvidia’s Tegra team (with the exception of Apple, whose A5 seems to be a genuine departure from the norm). And to tell the truth, the last year or so has seen these low-power chips in phones and tablets go from anemic weaklings to true modern 3D powerhouses. more info:
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