Independent research company Forrester Research, US, recently published a new report saying that the iPad challengers that have been announced so far are solid products with fatally flawed product strategies. These include Android Honeycomb tablets from Motorola, Toshiba and others, as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook and HP TouchPad.
The report notes that the competing tablets are too expensive, and cannot match the Apple Store as a channel. An earlier Forrester research had reportedly shown that consumers attribute more value to Apple products because of the in-store service. Consumers are not only comparing feeds and speeds, but there's also a human factor, says the new Forrester report. The humans working in the Apple Store will have a huge impact teaching consumers about the iPad and how to use it, it has been observed.
According to the latest report, Apple will have at least an 80 percent share of the US consumer tablet market in 2011, with competing tablets to the iPad poised to fail.
Further, the report says Amazon could create a compelling Android- or Linux-based tablet offering easy access to Amazon's storefront (including its forthcoming Android app store) and unique Amazon features like one-click purchasing, Amazon Prime service and its recommendations engine. According to the report, Amazon has the motivation to counter Apple's threat to its business model; a pricing model that could work; and the brand, content, and channel to pull it off.
Amazon is not the only potential disruptor to the still-forming tablet market. The report outlines ways in which Sony, Microsoft and Vizio could disrupt the tablet market, too. All this disruption is seen to lead to some surprising conclusions. Product strategists delivering content on tablets need to rethink their priorities. Product strategists on the device side have some reformulating to do - some may find it makes sense to wait until the market settles before launching a tablet that won't sell in volume this year.
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