Posted on 02/25/2011 4:55:31 PM PST by Swordmaker
The tablet war between Apple and Google is only just getting warmed up, but it’s going to take time before it becomes a full-scale conflict. Apple’s iPad has a good 10-month head-start over Google Honeycomb tablets, the first of which became available only yesterday. Motorola’s Xoom is the initial soldier in the Android army, and other Honeycomb tablets from LG, Samsung, Acer and others will soon enlist. So we’re sure to see a regiment or two join up with Android, but you can’t win a war solely with infantrymen. You need supporting personnel as well, and in this case, that means third-party developers. We’re only in the second day of the siege, but a quick scan of the Android Market shows a scant 16 tablet apps.
It’s great that the new Android Market has a section highlighting Android apps for tablets, but the shelves are definitely a little bare. There’s a good reason for this: It was only a few weeks ago that Google released the software toolkit for developers to write Honeycomb tablet apps. Mobile app programmers simply haven’t had time to digest the new features — and the APIs to use them — in Google’s operating system for tablets. However, I suspect there are actually more than 16 apps optimized for tablets. The Earthquake app, for example, is tablet-optimized, but doesn’t appear in the list above. Perhaps developers need to mark their app as “tablet ready” for inclusion this area of the store.
The tablet apps I’ve used — CNN, Pulse, Cordy and Accu Weather, among others — all do take advantage of the larger screen and new controls that Honeycomb provides. So from an end-user perspective, these apps are on the right track to help Google tablets compete against the iPad. There just aren’t enough of them yet, and that means potential buyers will primarily judge devices based on apps designed for the smaller screen. Unfortunately, the experience is generally a turn-off for some of the top-tier titles right now. Facebook’s home screen looks silly due to tiny icons on a relatively huge display. Twitter’s text is small and hard to read. And even the popular Angry Birds game appears slightly less crisp and more blocky on the Xoom’s 1280×800 resolution display. Both the native Google Books, as well as Amazon’s Kindle app do work well, so the e-book reading experience, at least, is solid.
Will developers adjust their software to run on Google tablets? Of course they will, although Google should have worked with key development partners to have apps ready in advance of the first Honeycomb tablet launch, like Apple did. That didn’t appear to happen, so fixing the situation now is going to take time and effort. This means Android won’t win (or even be competitive in) the tablet war in the short term. For the time being, Apple and its 60,000 iPad apps (as of last month), have a huge lead in terms of developer and consumer interest. Google’s going to have to put much more effort into mustering the troops if it wants to be more competitive in the tablet wars.
I’m surprised it took 17 posts for someone to point this out...
The android tablets will have thousands of apps as well, as everything coded for android-based phones will work on the tablets as well. A more accurate comparison would be “16” android apps vs the apps made for iPads but not iPhones, which is likely a pretty low number as well. Or, you could go with the 60,000 number for Apple, which I’m sure has a comparable number in the Android Market.
Not all apps are equally useful.
Wait until Sony releases the Playstation Suite.
It will go from 16 apps to 2,000 apps and all those apps will be wanted by everybody.
60,000 is the number of apps optimized for iPad -- some are "universal" apps, which contain both iPhone and iPad-sized graphics, and some are iPad-only. The iPad will also run iPhone apps, either in the middle of the screen or blown up to fill the screen; they are not included in the 60,000 figure.
Or, you could go with the 60,000 number for Apple, which I’m sure has a comparable number in the Android Market.
If you're counting phone apps that can also run on a tablet, the Android Market is at about 150,000, the App Store at 350,000. Subtract from that a few hundred or thousand iPhone apps that won't work properly on an iPad (because they require a camera, for example); also subtract all the Android apps that won't run reliably on Honeycomb.
2,000 apps is wildly optimistic, and "all... will be wanted by everybody" is delusional. Games sesigned for hardware controllers don't always translate well to a touch screen, so the PSOne emulation is iffy. Not to mention that the Playstation Suite is so far only offered for Android 2.3, the Xoom is not yet listed as compatible, and the ship date isn't narrowed down beyond "calendar 2011."
I’m personally waiting for the Sony version. If that isn’t adequate compatible, nothing would be. :)
The 60,000 iPad apps are not counting the iPhone/iPod touch apps that also run on the iPad. Those total something over 300,000. There are a few iPhone only apps, mostly those that hit phone hardware or the cameras, that will not work on the iPad. That 60,000 number are the number of specific iPad only apps that will not run on the smaller devices. .
“For most apps, it will take a day or two to reformat the CSS, and rescale graphics for these apps.”
Nope, you’re thinking of web development.
These apps use traditional programming tools, with Objective-C for iPad and Java for Android. Each has it’s own libraries and programming conventions. It’s far from trivial to port from one to the other.
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