The Galaxy Tab reached a reasonable level of success last year, with pretty much everyone else besides Asus with their Transformer, falling by the wayside. But Amazon’s Kindle Fire reached the same level of success in just a few months, and it keeps going. Of course, the Galaxy Tab is like twice the price of the Kindle Fire, but that says something about the strategy that Google and their partners should’ve adopted.
The strategy should’ve been to release high-end tablets for the same price or a little cheaper than the iPad, but also tablets that are as cheap as possible, but still work well for most people, and without all the bells and whistles that they don’t even care about. Because they didn’t realize this earlier, the other Android manufacturers are going to feel this in their pockets.
HTC has already hinted that they will focus even less on tablets in 2012, and if it weren’t for Google acquiring them, Motorola would’ve probably said the same thing after the very disappointing 1 million in tablet sales for the whole year. I’ve realized since last year that Samsung and Asus are going to be the big players in the Android tablet game (and of course Amazon now), and it seems that will continue to remain the case in the future, unless Google straightens Motorola up. Then they might have a good comeback in tablets, too.
Because of Android 4.0, I think Android will have a much better growth in 2012, and I think by the end of the year all Android-based tablets will surpass the iPad in market share. According to the latest reports, they only have to take 12% more of the market for that to happen.