The Rise and Fall of Android Tablets

One of the most exciting stories in the modern tech industry is that of tablets. Back in 2010, when the touchscreen smartphone revolution was in full swing, the introduction of iPad by Apple sparked immense interest in tablets. After all, we were getting accustomed to touch devices fully, and a large touchscreen not only seemed futuristic but also promised a lot of real-world uses. There is a huge difference in the smartphones used during the early days and the ones being used now.

These screens posed a challenge for many real-world scenarios. Actions, such as typing and media consumption weren’t exactly pleasing. But tablets, with its giant screens, seemed like the answer to those woes. With their large screens, watching movies, typing on virtual keyboards and playing mobile games would become so much more appealing. Even web browsing would be a breeze on a large screen. Students looking for a dissertation writing service would not need to power up a PC to search for the service.

At one time, tablets were so popular that they were perceived as the tech that would make laptops obsolete. We know now that this notion was quite far-fetched, and it failed miserably. The tablet market today is almost dead, even with Apple’s iPad being quite popular. Probably the biggest failure in the tablet market has been that of Android tablets. Today, what used to be a thriving space of Android tablets has been reduced to just a handful of options. The hope for Android tablets has diminished to the point that Google itself stopped supporting its latest Android tablet, and announced its exit from the tablet market.

But why did something as promising as tablets fail? How is it that something backed by so many technology giants fail to retain people’s interest? As it turns out, there’s no single reason for this. Instead, there are multiple factors which came together to spell doom for the tablet space ultimately.

Poor Tablet Optimisation

Probably the biggest reason for the downfall of Android is the platform’s fragmentation. To understand that, we need to know how Apple and its iOS differs from Android. Unlike Android, Apple is a company that’s much more closed off. It controls its software and hardware itself. By being in control of every aspect of its devices, Apple can optimise everything correctly. That is why iPad is such a hit even today, with it enjoying the significant tablet market share.

The story is quite different on the Android side of things. Android is an open-source operating system. What this essentially means is that anyone can take Android, make some customisations, and install it on their device. The way Google makes money from Android is by offering its services over Android. Anyway, what Android’s open-source nature means for Android is that it doesn’t have as much control over it as Apple has with its OS.

For earlier tablets, Google made the mistake of running the same version of Android on tablets as it did on phones. But Android software wasn’t optimised for the large tablet screens. And neither were the apps available at the time; this inevitably led to usability issues. Google did try to fix the problem by introducing a version of Android specially made for tablets. While it was a perfect response from Google, it posed another challenge.

App developers who had already been making apps for Android smartphones and the Android OS running on it didn’t warm up to the idea of making their apps compatible with another version of Android for tablets. Due to the added cost of developing apps for different versions of the same OS, many developers opted to forego optimising apps for tablets altogether and focused on smartphones itself. After all, the majority of users had smartphones. Hence the potential to earn more came from smartphones.

Even though later down the line, Google did eventually make a single version of Android compatible with both tablets and mobile, it never really seemed like Android tablets were anything more than a larger Android smartphone. Even today, many apps just aren’t optimised for tablets, like Instagram.

The Rise of Phablets

The original appeal of tablets was always a way of getting the best of both worlds, laptops and mobile phones. Tablets were meant to be a medium between the two. But when Samsung took a gamble and launched its Note series with an at the time substantial 5-inch screen, it was an instant hit. The popularity of Note series can be seen as a significant contributing factor to Android tablets’ downfall. It proved that users didn’t want to carry around two devices, which mostly did the same thing, just in different sizes. Smartphones with larger screens meant that users could do everything they did on a tablet, on the phone itself.

With the introduction of Samsung’s first Note phone, the term Phablet (Phone-tablet) was born. And it provided a perfect medium between the smartphone and the tablet. As Phablets grew in popularity, the tablets lost popularity.

2-in-1s

Another contributing factor to Android tablets’ downfall was the rise of 2-in-1 laptops. 2-in-1 laptops are, as the name implies, an amalgamation of a computer and a tablet. They are necessarily tablets with attachable docks or keyboards. They are great productivity tools and are much more portable than laptops. Media consumption is still high, thanks to the large screen size. Just like Phablets became a perfect medium between tablets and smartphones, the 2-in-1 laptops became an ideal medium between laptops and tablets.

Google realises this, of course. With the introduction of Chrome OS, they practically acknowledged that there wasn’t any space for an Android tablet. Chrome OS is Google’s answer to the desktop-based OS. With touchscreen functionality, integration of Play Store and the ability to run Android Apps, it’s perfect for light users. The low prices of Chromebooks meant that Chrome OS saw immense popularity in educational institutes around the world, effectively replacing any need of a tablet.