Displaying items by tag: Market Perception

Today was supposed to be Apple’s big day in the sun yet from most of the coverage on the internet there is very little truly new in the iPhone 5. Even Apple’s stock did not move much after the new phone was announced this was something that many analysts predicted might happen if the new iPhone did not have compelling features. Right now taking a look at Apple’s iPhone 5 all you are getting is a new OS (iOS 6) and a new connector that is actually pretty cool. However outside of that you are not getting much to be happy about we have already covered the specifications on the new iPhone, but now let’s see what these new specifications mean in the real world and to the consumer.

In our continuing coverage of Microsoft and their push to the cloud with their next generation of Windows we are hearing something that we expected people (consumers, analysts and journalists) to pick up on long ago. Microsoft has had a tradition of thinking “if we build it they will come”. This is mostly due to their heavy footprint in the marketplace. Let’s face it; Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world by a longshot while the Xbox is the most popular (in terms of sales) gaming console. The problem for Microsoft is that many consumers have bought into the push that hardware manufacturers (and yes software developers) have been touting “good enough” and the popular myth of “you can always upgrade”.

As I made my rounds this morning (checking out what the rest of the world thinks is going on in technology) I stumbled across a couple of articles that had my laughing. One of them was just more of what I have been hearing since 1997, the PC is going away. I honestly do not know how some analyst firms can even print this any longer. The PC has been a fixture in the home and work place for so long and it is such an integrated fixture in how people do work that it is very unlikely you will see the PC go away. Still we see this almost every quarter despite both many “PC” related companies posting record quarters and PC sales actually being up between 2-4%.

The New iPad is having a VERY rough time for a new Apple product. Even the iPhone 4 with its “antennagate” issue has not gotten as much press for so many problems. The first one that was brought to our attention was the heating issue. This little problem has been vilified and explained away by multiple sites. However, there is no mistaking the fact that under usage the New iPad runs up to 13 degrees hotter than the iPad2. Apple and others have tried to say it is an increase in the number of LEDs that are used for backlighting and that is plausible, but we should also look at the fact that you have a larger battery, beefier charging system, twice the number of GPU cores (4 PowerVR SGX 543s) and also twice the amount of memory under the hood. All of this adds up in a way that the Apple engineers appear to have missed. But the heat issue is not the only problem that has been brought up this week alone.

Remember how we told you not too long ago that Microsoft was being smart by working on a tablet friendly version of Windows 8? (Which they have been trying very hard to screw up) Well, one of the things we said about this was the people want a tablet that can do real production work. We have seen this in our own tinkering with multiple tablets from the iPad, iPad2, Transformer and the Flagship tablet, the Asus EEE Slate EP 121. Out of all of these, the only one that we can actually do full production work on is the EP121. Oddly enough (not really) it is also the only one of the group that runs on Windows 7.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the Transformer (we will have a review of that up soon) for its versatility and ease of use. It is a great little tool and easy to transport. However, there are no real productivity apps available for it. I have tried all of the office suites from Documents to Go, Apple’s Pages, to Quick Office. None of them can compete with Office 2010; even Pages (which comes closest) cannot cut it. The tools and flow are not there, it is as simple as that.

It seems that this is not just my opinion on the subject, but a majority of consumers in both the US and China. According to a poll taken by the Boston Consulting Group and another one by Forrester earlier this year over 40 % of US consumers would like a Windows Based Tablet.  BCG’s numbers came in at 42% while the Forrester report showed a nice 46% wanted a Windows based tablet.  The remaining 50%+ was not all iOS either. Forrester claimed that 9% were interested in Android while 16% wanted iOS. BCG’s study claimed that 20% were interested in Android while 27% were looking into an iOS based tablet.

These numbers are only shocking when you leave out what people really want from their devices. They want a seamless experience. One thing that bugs me about having a desktop, laptop, and two different tablets is that to do anything on the Transformer I have to format it differently (especially videos). On the other Windows based devices, I just move files back and forth or put them in my Asus Cloud Drive account (if they are not important or need security).  Of course it also does not mean they want something like the EP121. While I love my EEE Slate, it can be bulky and is awkward to use with the keyboard at times. No what they want is something like the Tab or the Transformer, but running all of their favorite Windows software (including Office); this is what will finally bring the tablet home for many people.

So it seems that I am not the only one that feels that Windows is making the right (if somewhat late) move to a more tablet based OS and will only increase their potential for profit by coding for ARM (something they should have done with Windows 7).  Of course… that is saying they do not alienate all of their potential customers by failing to grasp what the market really wants in a tablet.

Source All things D

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