In the past year, Android has gained significant mileage over iOS when compared as an OS. It seems that the arrival of Android 4.1 onwards called the Jelly Bean has heralded good times and Android is not just building its reputation as a more popular OS but also one that has significant advantages over the others. But even though the market is seeing a sea change, the fact is that Apple still commands a premium when it comes to tablets.
We have seen a downpour of Android tablets with Asus being the best in hardware, Samsung being the most popular and Google Nexus being the best in software, but if we shift our focus from the smartphone to just the tablet market, we get to see that Apple is still the king here. The iPad is still the best tablet, not just in terms of features, but also in terms of hardware and most importantly, software. Android, on the other hand while delivers great on a smartphone platform, doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to tablets. The OS has kind of remained stagnant when it comes to tablet functionality and the iPad still offers too much more. This is also because Apple unlike Android doesn’t have more on its plate than it can savor. It has, ever since the arrival of the iPad built a huge base of apps for the device and continues to increase.
It is 2013, 3 years since the introduction of the first iPad and Android’s parent company Google has raked in considerable moolah along with a favorable patent portfolio in the meantime. But the story with Android tablets still remains the same, they are still performing below par. Still many companies such as Asus and Sony have in fact, made huge leaps in terms of technology, but it is Android that kind of keeps this wonderful range of tabs ranking behind the iPad – it simply hasn’t picked up the mantle when it comes to apps. The Google Play experience of apps too lags behind the iPad, and needs to still be better customized for them. It is not that Google hasn’t tried with tablets. It has in fact, in the past even come up with a seperate OS for tabs – the Honeycomb OS but that also didn’t float its boat.
Besides this, one other thing is that the iPad is still much ahead in terms of apps. One reason cited by developer for not developing as many Android tablet apps as the iPad, is that Android tablet have only picked up pace in the last year which saw the release of many tablets which were finally raising the bar – such as the Google Nexus and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD.
According the market analysis firm Canalys, ” To take the Play ecosystem to the next level, Google needs more than just a large addressable base of devices, App developers need to see clear potential to build robust and sustainable business models around apps built for the platform, so increasing monetization potential must be a priority.”
According to its findings, 30 per cent of the top 50 free and paid iPad apps aren’t available for Android tablets. And those are just stats for country based store that boasts of the most apps, the US app store for Apple. Furthermore, 18 per cent of the iPad apps available were not even synchronized for tablets.
To sum it up, there are 375,000 tablet available for iPad while Android tablet apps come around 40,000. This lag in availability of apps push the iPad far ahead and make it a more value for money tablet.
