If tablets are going to be a big part of the Android ecosystem, then I would still argue that they would need some kind of special section in the market.
Would the market app be able to read your devices resolution and then denote which apps are optimized for that? I have an older Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero) with a smaller resolution, can I see/install tablet apps from the market? If yes, that's a bad experience, if no, then it would seem that they can do some sort of detection.
I'm just spitballing here, so this might not even be half baked.
> Would the market app be able to read your devices resolution and then denote which apps are optimized for that? I have an older Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero) with a smaller resolution, can I see/install tablet apps from the market? If yes, that's a bad experience, if no, then it would seem that they can do some sort of detection.
The Android Market already has the ability to hide or filter apps based on the capabilities of your device (eg, features, OS version, etc), and the feature requirements defined by the applications' manifests. If your device doesn't have an accelerometer, you aren't shown any applications that require use of the accelerometers. [1]
For your specific example, you won't see any apps made for Honeycomb on your phone's market just for the simple reason that you aren't running Honeycomb. As for resolution, any application can (and should) be designed with multiple screen resolutions in mind, and the Android API's give developers ample help with this task. [2]
So in all honesty, you shouldn't even have to distinguish between a "tablet app" versus a "phone app"; developers should be making apps that have both segments in mind.
If tablets are going to be a big part of the Android ecosystem, then I would still argue that they would need some kind of special section in the market.
Would the market app be able to read your devices resolution and then denote which apps are optimized for that? I have an older Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero) with a smaller resolution, can I see/install tablet apps from the market? If yes, that's a bad experience, if no, then it would seem that they can do some sort of detection.
I'm just spitballing here, so this might not even be half baked.