Google’s Android Tablet Ambitions Rest On One Flawed Assumption

Google has been pretending tablets don't exist for far too long now and if it wasn't for the presence of Samsung and its perseverance with the Galaxy Tab range, the whole Android tablet market would amount to nothing more than cheap, underpowered devices from no-name manufacturers interspersed with a few cheap, underpowered devices from better know manufacturers.

Samsung aside, performance of those devices in rough in the extreme. Upgrade support is all but non-existent in the sector.

When you're competing against the iPad, which is powerful, has impressive app availability and will be receiving iPadOS upgrades for the next five years at least; or Microsoft, whose Windows tablets pull double duty as capable laptops (or is that the other way around ); the shabby Android tablet market (and the only slightly less so) Chromebooks tablet market are just not good enough.

Interesting then, that Android co-founder Rich Milner has returned to Google with a brief to make Android tablets great. 

Milner's first assessment is that tablets can be capable, but less expensive laptops shows that he hasn't really grasped the task before him. That could make the challenge even more difficult.

Laptops have a wealth of Windows / Mac software which will run well on even relatively inexpensive hardware (Microsoft has the tablet priced Surface Go to prove this point exactly). Android on the other hand has a wealth of apps designed to run on phones which work poorly or very poorly indeed when blow up to tablet screen sizes.

Samsung has added DeX mode to its tablets to allow them to get around some of these limitations - and they have succeeded for the most part. Even so, there's no sign of the Galaxy Tab displacing the iPad at the top of the market.

Google will need to come up with some compelling reasons for developers to work tablet compatibility into their Android apps - and given the relative size of the iPad market, I can't see that happening.