The Apple iPad has ruled the land for more than a year now. Less than 2 months ago, HP unveiled it’s Touchpad, the “iPad Killer.” After just 49 days on the market, HP has decided to kill it; manufacturing 250,000 but selling only 25,000. Best Buy has asked HP to take their entire inventory back. In fact, HP is ending it’s entire WebOS Hardware business which means, no more Touchpad, no more Pre phones and may be ending it’s PC arm as well. In a recent survey in the New York Times, more than 50 percent of those surveyed, who were between 22 and 60 years old, said they already owned a tablet or were interested in buying one soon, with 95 percent of these respondents choosing the Apple iPad.
Apple currently owns 61% of the market share with Android being the closest competitor at around 30%. What makes the difference between success and failure in the tablet market? Is it that App Developers can develop the best apps for the iPad? Is it the shear number (200,000+) of apps in the Apple store? Or is the quality of the device and it’s OS software that determines success or failure in the tablet market? It seems it’s a combination of all of the above.
Some say that the HP’s WebOS 3.0 was the best tablet operating system…just not in its buggy, unpredictable, and not-quite-done state.
Until someone does something mind blowing with its software, or hardware, we don’t expect the reign of the iPad to end any time soon.