iPad 'only game in town' during holiday tablet sales
updated 10:40 am EST, Tue December 28, 2010
Analyst calls most competing tablets 'junk'
Checks at retail confirm high demand for the iPad, says Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair. "Even with a handful of tablet competitors hitting the market, the iPad remained the only game in town in our holiday checks largely because many of the tablets hitting the market are junk for lack of a better word," he writes. Without naming specific models, Blair suggests that most tablets are currently "underpowered, poorly constructed and largely not ready for prime time."
The only significant rival to the iPad has so far been the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android tablet with some feature advantages, but also some tradeoffs and a higher base cost. Other major competitors are still in development; RIM's PlayBook should ship early next year, while Motorola has yet to even make a formal announcement. Apple itself is expected to ship a second-generation iPad in March or April.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2008
I hope the iPad just crushes the competition
into finely ground powder for trying to rush out unfinished tablets to consumers. That sort of tactic just smacks of outright greed with no consideration at all for end users. Selling a product of poor quality and insufficient testing in order to grab market share is despicable. Companies that do that sort of practice should fail. Most of the iPad rivals really thought they could throw together a tablet project in a few months and rush a product to market in a few months more. They'll see how well that works out for them when their products end up unsold or returned in droves.