True, but with the phones there were lots of people who couldn't buy an iPhone to use on their carrier or wanted something cheap.
Android phones had a captive market.
iPads are more useful, cheaper and not limited by carrier. Why would a non-enthusiast buy an Android tablet based on the idea they they might get better over time, when iPads are good now?
Some people for sure - like the 20% who buy
MP3 players other than iPods, but most people bought Android in tbe beginnig because they couldn't buy apple or because apple was more expensive.
Now, Android phones are genuinely competitive with the iPhone, but they got there because they had real advantages in availability and price from day one. Android tablets don't have those advantages.
There are a lot of people who prefer other products over Apple's in the same way that there are still a lot of people who still prefer a feature phone over a smartphone.
Why did anyone buy an iPad when they came out? There were no iPad specific apps when it came out, and yet it sold well.
Clearly, Android has a good web browser and email client, and that's enough for many. Just as clearly there are a huge number of non-tablet specific apps that will run fine on the Android tablets, and Android developers are desperately releasing tablet apps as fast as they can to try and take advantage of the "gold rush" when a new platform launches.
I thought there were quite a lot of apps for the iPad at launch, thanks to an early SDK release. At least there was talk of another app-store gold rush, stories of non-US developers flying to the US for the launch day just so that they could immediately check whether their already published app worked on the real device, etc.
There were more than 3,000 tablet specific apps on day 1, and there was no competition.
New platforms don't automatically lead to a gold rush. There hasn't been one for the palm pre.
The argument you are making is that normal consumers will pick a more expensive android tablet with very few apps over an iPad 2 with thousands of apps, some of then mind-blowing on the basis that there will surely be a developer gold-rush.
Even if there is a developer gold-rush, people will still have to wait a year for then software to be written.
I can see enthusiasts doing that by but why on earth would a regular consumer?
Even if you were to ignore the iPad apps that were available from the early SDK release, you'd still be comparing "devices with no platform-specific apps" to "devices with no apps".
Carrier argument doesn’t really come into it - we’re in the same situation in the UK but the iPhone’s been available on every major carrier since the 3GS.
Yes, but all those carriers have had the prices jacked up to the roof. The US gets a $49 3GS, UK prices range from £59 ($95) to £189 (some offer it free on a very expensive monthly contract over two years). For an out-of-date handset.
Compare the Android phones, where you get HTC Desires for free, on 12 or 18-month contracts with monthly charges in the £20s.
Apple has a big price problem competing in the UK in phones. It gets away with $1:£1 in computing, just, but it won't when Android is "good enough".
