Joe Kremer, MD at Dell Australia was quoted saying that Apple’s bestseller tablet, the iPad is hardly the device which would appeal to businessmen. Ironically, the Cupertino-based company has been hugely successful with the iOS tablet, both casual and business-minded users have reacted positively to the device.
Presently, Apple’s tablet holds a 75% share of the total tablet sales all across the globe, clearly indicating that Apple has single-handedly driven the industry forward, as yet. The industry of personal computers, although, is eagerly looking forward to the new Windows OS, Windows 8 to get the push to work on tablets and pitch a potent device against the iPad. The advantage that Windows 8 devices would hold over their Apple’s counterpart is interoperability with all personal computers which are working on a Windows platform.
According to Kremer, the iPads are still pretty unstable and unfit for corporate users because of the lack of aforementioned interoperability. In spite of lacking behind in features that would make the device businessmen-friendly, Apple has been successful in placing the iPad in the hands of thousands of managers/executives mostly because of its compactness and security – if the devices is ever stolen, the user can “remote-wipe” the iPad and prevent sensitive data and information to be accessed and used.
Several tablet devices have tried to ride on iPad’s success but have failed significantly. HP’s own TouchPad didn’t please buyers since a better option in the same price bracket was readily available. Blackberry’s own tablet solution, the Playbook was one of the reasons behind Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion’s extensive reorganization drive. Networking giant Cisco chose to enter the tablet market too with the Cius, but discontinued the device two weeks after it was announced.
However, Samsung’s Galaxy Tablet line and Motorola’s Xoom line has seen a fair amount of success in bringing Google’s mobile OS, Android to the tablet market. Online-shopping portal and bookseller Amazon bought out its own commercial tablet in the form of an advanced version of the Kindle ebook-reader – Kindle Fire. Kindle Fire started off greatly but saw a huge decline of 80% in its sales after the rather fruitful Q4 last year.
As stated by Kremer, the events and happenings in Europe (economic meltdown of heavyweight EU countries) and changes in the interest rate will question the feasibility of any sort of technological investment in the coming months.
