What Tablet War? 2011 is the year of the iPad… again. Don’t expect that to change any time soon either. While the competition, most notably the PlayBook from RIM and the Xoom from Motorola, focused on “speeds and feeds,” Apple honed its perfection of the “experience”.
But if you believed the media and the never-ending iPad-killer fueled headlines earlier this year you’d think we’d be witnessing Louis vs. Schmeling I all over again. Seems like the press and blogs-alike enjoy playing up a good fight, even if it’s a non-existent, astonishingly lopsided bout:
Technolog – Motorola Xoom Android tablet may be first iPad killer (MSNBC Technology) – Jan 5
Jim Louderback: iPad Killer: Truly, Really, I mean It (Huffington Post) – Jan 6
Secret Details of HP’s iPad-Killer Leaked (FoxNews.com) – Jan 26
Google Unveils the Real iPad-Killer: Honeycomb (Huliq) – Feb 3
The Real iPad Killer: HP Shows Off the TouchPad (TomsGuide)- Feb 9
Motorola’s Xoom Starts Tablet Wars With iPad – Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) – Feb 23
Is the Revised Galaxy Tab 10.1 an iPad 2 Killer? (Mashable) – March 23
Even ipadkiller.net a web site aimed squarely at watching the iPad crumble has apparently thrown in the towel, with no updates since last October.
Google “iPad Killer” and you get 164,000 results. People love… rather loved the idea. If the euphoria peaked during CES with the frenzied unveiling of the Motorola Xoom, in recent weeks the tablet hangover has set in. Epic. Most of the press now appear to have sobered up and realized that Apple and the iPad are a phenomenon, the likes of which the tech world has never seen:
Motorola Xoom Review Roundup: It’s Great, but Don’t Buy It (The Atlantic) – Feb 24
Motorola Xoom review: Groundbreaking, but disappointing (TechRepublic) – March 9
Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets – too geeky to succeed? (TrustedReviews) – March 11
Review: Motorola Xoom Good, But No iPad Killer (InformationWeek) – March 12
Xoom tablet nice, but no iPad killer (San Jose Mercury News) – March 13
Motorola not planning orders for iPad-competing Xoom past June – report (AppleInsider) – March 22
There are a few who did the trees from the forest early on. Tom Bradley may have summed up the sentiment best. It was as true when he penned the headline for PCWorld back in April 2010 as it is today: iPad Killer? We Can’t Even Get an iPad Challenger.
KO.
Graphic: vouchercodes.co.uk