iPad wins, others fight for scraps

by Tecfan

iPad 2 wins the tablet wars, competitors already DOA – Computerworld Blogs
[Via Apple Holic]

Apple’s [AAPL] iPad 2 hits US retail Friday, and already many of the 100 competing tablets shown at CES this year are being terminated, withdrawn, shelved or otherwise dumped. That’s because competitors now know what I’ve been telling them: their expensive and less well-featured alternatives are DOA.

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This may explain why Motorola released a 0.9 product now – they thought the big battle for the tablet market would take off in April and they wanted to be in front of the wave of new products.

It seems they might have rushed the Xoom to the market to little effect. Many others are simply delaying their products in order to retool. Better to have a product that might be competitive than one that loses.

And it looks more and more likely that Samsung’s Tab is a loser in the market. They seem to have stuffed the channel so they could claim large sales figures but people are not buying them. There is a 15% return rate so far.

June is now the new data for the tablet wars but as the article mentions, iOS5 and the next iPhone will be debuting then, sucking up all the oxygen for anyone else.

This is all part of the Apple ecosystem, which neither Samsung, Motorola nor any other hardware maker can match. It is not just a matter of getting lower prices for manufacturing because of volume, although that is a big point.

It is the information transferred across the ecosystem. What Apple learns with the iPhone can be used to leverage the iPad/iPod and vice versa. And both feed into its desktop strategy.

Apple has feedbacks in place across the entire mobile device ecosystem to let it know what works and what does not. It can then incorporate this into new and novel approaches that the customers want.

In the Android world, each of these ecosystems is separate and provide little information to other types of mobile devices. It does not seem that the smartphone market really informs the tablet in ways that are well leveraged. Simply look at the review for the Xoom to see these defects.

Apple knows what needs to be the same and what needs to be different in the mobile ecosystem it has created. No one else has this level of information to deal with.

Until they do, Apple will be a leader.