Putting Android Tablet Sales In (Humorous) Perspective

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The iPad is not yet 1.5 years old, and Android tablets are approaching their first anniversary. But while one product is mature and selling well, the other is still struggling to find success, and with some good reasons – the fragmentation that plagues Android smartphones is worse on tablete; app compatibility restrictions are often nonsensical; and the core design choices made are often counter-intuitive.

Marco Arment, the creator of InstaPaper and Marco.org has put together an amusing look at how the sales of all Android tablets compare to sales of some obscure video game console ‘failures’.

HP hasn’t released any sales figures for the TouchPad yet. I wonder if it will outsell the Virtual Boy this year.

I didn’t include the iPad’s approximately 30 million units on here because it distorted the graph’s scale too much.

As he notes, there are no numbers yet for the HP TouchPad, which would be very interesting to see especially in light of the recent mega-sale and price drop.

Another interesting chart would be to graph the iPad (>30 million) as a game system – and chart it against the PSP (~65 million) and the Nintendo DS (~160 million)!

What do you think about the Android Tablets you have seen? Are you planning to buy one any time soon, or like many others are you waiting for everyone (or someone) to ‘figure it out’?

Source: Marco.org

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About the Author

Michael Anderson
I have loved technology for as long as I can remember - and have been a computer gamer since the PDP-10! Mobile Technology has played a major role in my life - I have used an electronic companion since the HP95LX more than 20 years ago, and have been a 'Laptop First' person since my Compaq LTE Lite 3/20 and Powerbook 170 back in 1991! As an avid gamer and gadget-junkie I was constantly asked for my opinions on new technology, which led to writing small blurbs ... and eventually becoming a reviewer many years ago. My family is my biggest priority in life, and they alternate between loving and tolerating my gaming and gadget hobbies ... but ultimately benefits from the addition of technology to our lives!

2 Comments on "Putting Android Tablet Sales In (Humorous) Perspective"

  1. I have 1st gen iPad and I love the device, it works really well it has some very good applications and it’s a really nice overall experience.
    But I’m pretty sure my next tablet is going to be Android device. While I do love my iPad there is a lot of reasons (at least for me) to get Android tablet.
    Stuff like options – there is just one iPad, yes there are different configurations but that’s not it, with Android I can select something like iPad (Samsung Tab 10.1), something with ports (USB, SD) and lower price (Acer A500), something with keyboard (Asus Slider), something like a netbook (Asus Transformer), something smaller (8,9″, 7″, 5″)… list goes on…
    I for one like options even if it means some fragmentation.
    I also like Honeycomb, UI is nice, you have widgets (some can be really useful) and it brings much more than iOS when it comes to some productivity scenarios. For instance I can read/write memory cards and USB storage devices – not just import pictures, but use them, I can connect keyboards and mouse and use them – and yes sometimes mouse comes handy for doing things, even applications are getting better then on iPad – yes iPad has more and better apps on average, but some things, like Evernote for instance already works better on Android than on iPad – I can actually edit rich text notes with images and stuff on my Nexus phone (and any Android device) – something you can’t (at the moment) do on iPad.
    Will Evernote update their iPad application – I’m pretty sure they will, but same goes for will there be quality tablet specific applications for Android – I’m just as sure they will be.

    Adding that to already really good Google applications (better than on iPad), Apple’s antics (Readers and their stores…), I don’t have much reasons to go with Apple for my next tablet.

    O and one more thing above chart I guess shows “only” the Honeycomb tablets, not all Android tablets, since Samsung alone sold something like 1,5-2 million 7″ Galaxy tab’s by spring (before Honeycomb) and since then this machines are quite cheap and still selling well – as far as I know the total number of Android tablets is somewhere around 30% of iPad sales – 10 million…

    Ups, sorry for the lengthy rant I didn’t want to write such a novel 🙂

  2. stevenshytle | August 16, 2011 at 8:01 am |

    I love the idea of one, but I keep getting stuck at the price point. I just cannot bring myself to spend money on a tablet when they approach laptop prices. For all the form factor differences (pros and cons) I keep coming down to a tablet is thin and has an incredible battery life, but to me it is just an oversized PDA. A laptop has lousy battery life, but it is a windows/linux computer with all the options that come with it.

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