Eszter Morvay from IDC on tablets-n-targets

1. Where is the market?2. iPad Surprise in 20103. Are All Tablets Equal?4. View All Pages

We asked Eszter if everything about the tablet PC market was ‘roses’.

Morvay gave a wry smile, “Not at all. The demand was so quick and so strong that it created an opportunity for a variety of companies to launch sub-standard product into the market – especially with weak versions of free operating systems. Apple launched with a solid platform and mature applications. Some of the products we saw in the market under the £200 mark are very weak, running on Android 2.1 or even older operating systems”.

She then explained the likely consequences, “Whenever customers are disappointed, product gets returned. It could be actual problems with the rushed hardware and software combinations, or it could simply be that the overall experience is so different from what they are used to that the product gets rejected. Either way, it can mean a lot of returns to the store and, subsequently, to the manufacturer”.

KitGuru has been hands-on with a low-cost tablet running Android 2.1 recently and it was a complete disaster. While Android 2.2 has possibilities, we would not wish v2.1 on our worst enemies. Honeycomb etc are much anticipated – and for very good reasons.

Arguably the company with the greatest experience in this market is Toshiba. When Microsoft originally launched the tablet concept almost 10 years ago, Toshiba was among the first with touch screen tablet-style designs.

However, the Toshiba Folio 100 got absolutely smashed in mainstream reviews. The reviews, alongside terrible returns problems, meant that the Toshiba product got publicly dumped by UK retail monolith PC World/Dixons.

At a recent event, folks responsible for driving the Samsung Galaxy into the market were all seen using Apple iPhones and iPads. Nuff said.

Morvay related the iPad situation back to the challenges faced by the CPU manufacturers, “Almost no consumers  understand the naming conventions for mobile parts. There are so many processor ranges, with so many variations, that it would take an expert 10 minutes to explain it to a single consumer”.

Any KitGuru reader can see how this would cause confusion about a given CPU’s benefits – muddying the waters and making it easier for Apple to sell into that confusion with a single/simple product/interface.

“While AMD and Intel spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing and delivering a huge variety of new processors, with subtle technical differences, Apple has conquered the consumer by using, essentially, a single cheap chip designed for a mobile phone”, said Morvay.

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The challenge does not stop with the hardware, “Even the cheapest versions of Windows 7 are still costly. Also, the out of box experience you get with Windows 7 Starter is not in the same league as the iPad. Apple’s OS is robust and feature-rich. Switch the product on and it works. We have yet to see anything like that from a Windows-based product”, said Morvay.

According to KitGuru's research, that kind of Windows experience won't arrive until at least Windows 8, which won't be the operating system of choice in high-street stores much before Christmas 2012. That's a hell of a run-up to give your competitors. Especially when they are Google and Apple.

So, while the market for desktop systems has not died completely, its golden days seem to have passed for good.

As KitGuru has commented on more than once in recent times, the focus of the majority of the world's users seems to be  more on ‘how much power can you carry with you', rather than ‘how much power you can own'.

That said, when you need to process video, play the latest games at extreme resolutions or simply get a rush of pure, nut-tightening testosterone – there's no substitute for a whopping great tower system – filled to the brim with components that look like they need their own electrical sub-station. That's what stimulates a lot of KitGuru readers and, in the Labs, we love it. But we also quite like those shiny, shiny iPad 2 things. Decisions, decisions.

KitGuru says: We really appreciate Eszter Morvay taking the time to speak with us. We'd hate to be a corporate executive charged with lying to this lady under oath. She's got some stare!

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