LG hasn’t had much success in the tablet market in the early days of Android tablets, but then again neither did many other manufacturers. But now, the situation has improved and LG seems willing to try again with a new tablet later this year.
When LG launched the LG Optimus Pad in 2011, with Android 3.0 and a dual core processor, Android 3.0 wasn’t a very optimized operating system, and it seemed like it was rushed to market. The proof for this was also the fact that Google only released the SDK literally a day before the launch of the first Android 3.0 tablet (Motorola Xoom), when such a SDK is usually released months earlier to give developers time to make apps for that OS and those devices.
But then when developers saw that people aren’t buying the $800 Motorola Xoom, and neither the other tablets from other manufacturers, including LG, they didn’t bother writing apps for Android tablets anymore. Of course, Google saying that they don’t really need to anyway, because apps can “scale” didn’t exactly encourage them to build tablet optimized apps either.
But I believe Google has learned from its mistakes, and is now trying to give more incentives to developers to make tablet optimized apps. They also had the right strategy releasing a 7″ Nexus 7 tablet first, to ease people into buying Android tablets, and start making Android tablets more interesting for developers and other manufacturers, too.
Right now, there’s a chicken and egg problem, but apps are starting to become optimized for tablets, which means tablet sales should increase, too. In fact, the latest research shows Android tablets are dominating the market in the past quarter, and that growth should continue in the coming quarters and years.
This could be why LG is trying to get back in the Android tablet game later this year, as rumored. Their tablet is scheduled for late Q3 this year. If I were to bet I’d say they will be making an 8″ tablet, for a lower price, but they might try to build a 10-11″ one, too. Rumors of specs are yet to be released.
[Via PhoneArena]