Google Quits Selling Tablets (techcrunch.com) 143
Google has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the "tablets" heading from its Android page. It was there yesterday, but it's gone today. TechCrunch reports: Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chrome OS side of things, where it has inherited the questionable (but lucrative) legacy of netbooks. They've also been working on broadening Android compatibility with that OS. So it shouldn't come as much surprise that the company is bowing out.
Sales have dropped considerably, since few people see any reason to upgrade a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. Google's exit doesn't mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They'll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn't selling them, it probably isn't prioritizing them as far as features and support. Android Police was first to break the news.
Sales have dropped considerably, since few people see any reason to upgrade a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. Google's exit doesn't mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They'll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn't selling them, it probably isn't prioritizing them as far as features and support. Android Police was first to break the news.
Not surprising (Score:1)
Google does something, makes something and then drops it unceremoniously after a time, leaving everyone hanging. I long ago left the Google world for Fastmail and an iPhone. A much saner environment. OpenBSD for an OS, iPhone for comms, Fastmail for email and calendar. Not looking back.
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You don't need to talk to someone that way just because they disagree with you. Take your meds, psycho.
Re: Not surprising (Score:4, Informative)
#FakeNews
From openbsd.org: "The current release is OpenBSD 6.3, released Apr 15, 2018."
Sure doesn't look like it was end-of-lifed last year.
Re: Not surprising (Score:1)
That dude in Canada is the same one who started the project bro...
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I have only iPad from Apple and I have yet to see another device with such outstanding quality and support. All my Android phones stopped getting upgrades after about 1.5 years, the iPad kept getting upgrades for about 10 years, and stopped upgrading only because hardware was not compatible with the new software anymore, however it is still operational and workin
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An even simpler solution. [amazonaws.com]
They killed it off after 2013. (Score:2, Interesting)
They had Nexus 7 releases in 2012 and 2013. Reviewed well. Sold well. People left anxiously awaiting an upgraded model. Zippo.
Re:They killed it off after 2013. (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought a 2013 tablet in 2015, it was still a good buy two years later with only a small price cut.
Google just doesn't value all money the same. They view money earned from advertising as real money, and money earned from selling real products and services is some sort of taboo blood money or something. If it was unpopular they'd be more likely to keep selling it.
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Exactly this! Still waiting on that update that'll never happen of the Nexus 7. I fucking loved mine. I would have given them more cash, but they never gave me the option!
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Same here. I waited and waited for a new Nexus 7. When I couldn't wait any longer I tried a few and finally settled on the Samsung. I like it better than the others I tested but I still wish I had a Nexus.
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Yep! Nexus 7 was perfect...Mine had its screen die one day, I discovered that it wasn't made anymore...To have an okay screen I had to buy a shitty overpriced Samsung tablet that is barely useable...Maybe next time I will make do between a big phone, a laptop and an e-book reader (if that still exists...) ...And then they wonder why tablets are "dying"...
Bought a Lenovo tablet as a gift a few years back, apparently it wasn't bad and the price was good...Of course they don't make this model anymore...
Funny; over in iOS-land, tablets are doing fine.
You can whine all you want; but Apple is truly the only company that has had a sustainable tablet solution, and has had it for just under a decade, with no real signs of stopping.
In fact, their tablets, and their purpose-built OS, are actually becoming more robust over time, to the point where some people have actually been able to work entirely in iOS. NOT saying everyone can, not by a long shot; but it has been getting steadily better over the past few years
So weird. (Score:1)
Amazon sells tablets fine with the major complaint being that they lack the Google Play store and standard Google apps. The market was there. All Google had to do was match the specs of Amazon devices and make it Google specific instead of Amazon specific.
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Absolutely this.
I bought my daughter a Kindle 7 inch because she kept wanting to use my iPad and I didn't want to spend that much money on her. I put it in a childproof case along with a large microSD card and she uses it for YouTube, to play some games an
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Absolutely this.
I bought my daughter a Kindle 7 inch because she kept wanting to use my iPad and I didn't want to spend that much money on her. I put it in a childproof case along with a large microSD card and she uses it for YouTube, to play some games and watch her favourite films.
If Google had offered an alternative priced around the same (hell, I would happily pay a slight premium to avoid Amazon's "improvements") then I would have bought it in an instant.
Google are missing a trick here.
You can buy a brand new 9.7 inch iPad for under $300. Guaranteed she will like that better than your cheapskate inferior non-solution.
Re: So weird. (Score:2)
A Fire 7" tablet costs $50
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J... [amazon.com]
I'm sure something costing 6x the price can be nicer, though. I'm certainly not at the point where that price difference is non-significant, especially when a child is going to be doing their best to break it.
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A Fire 7" tablet costs $50
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J... [amazon.com]
I'm sure something costing 6x the price can be nicer, though. I'm certainly not at the point where that price difference is non-significant, especially when a child is going to be doing their best to break it.
Hey, sitting here with my relatively ancient iPad 2, that I wouldn't even HAVE if my employer had 't given it to me for XMas about 5 years ago, I'm very familiar with personal finances compromising and/or limiting choices in tech. So, it that is the case, then I sincerely apologize for my snarky comment!
But if you can ever see it to purchase an iPad, they are pretty rugged, and with a simple case, are fairly indestructible.
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Used iPad 3s start around $100 from various eBay sellers. I picked one up a while back for use as a PDF reader, as it was the first model to ship with the "retina display." Android tablets with comparable displays were quite a bit more expensive, last time I checked. For my purposes, I didn't even need to jailbreak it; the only software I added was a WebDAV client that I use to pull files from my home server. PDFs get opened in iBooks. (I could also use it for ePub files, but I have a Kobo Glo HD for t
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She's two, so I can pretty much guarantee that she won't care as long as it plays Hey Duggee.
She can have an iPad when she's old enough to care for and appreciate the fact that it's six times more expensive than her Kindle Fire.
If I'm getting a tablet... (Score:2)
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So tablets run magical “non-programs?” Are you an idiot? How exactly is a tablet application not an “actual program?”
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The same way a fat device with a fan and 3 hours battery life is a tablet I'd guess?
Re:If I'm getting a tablet... (Score:5, Insightful)
You do understand that people buy tablets specifically because they aren't PCs. They're fast, touch orentied, easy to use, and provide an easy platform to deliver the services they want to use. To most consumers, when it comes to computers, less really is more.
They don't have all of the problems a windows PC has. Driver issues. Bugs with windows updates. Malware.
With a tablet you tap on the app store, tell it what app you want, tap it and you're done. There's no installer. There's no "Oh sorry you need .net framework but the installer shit itself because microsoft changed something"
A surface is not a tablet. It's a thin laptop with a shitty keyboard.
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iPad Pro is for professional doodlers.
Tablets themselves are dying (Score:4, Interesting)
Tablet sales worldwide are down year over year, and have been for several years. Most people just don't have a need for a device between their phone and their computer. Not surprising that it isn't Google's priority.
Re: Tablets themselves are dying (Score:2)
You fuckers are the reason the rest of us can't buy a decent tablet.
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My phone display is large enough that it's the best of both worlds (phone and tablet)
Too bad you phone is too big to fit in a shirt pocket.
Re: Tablets themselves are dying (Score:1)
Meanwhile, the iPad by itself would be a fortune 100 company
Re: Tablets themselves are dying (Score:2)
And yet Samsung alone sells more tablets than Apple.
25 million Samsung tablets sold last year (Score:1)
To put it in perspective, Samsung *alone* sells 25 million Android tablets each year, and that's despite Android's issues* on the tablet.
* e.g. it forces you to turn the tablet portrait if the app says portrait, instead of running the app in a portrait window. It does this even if a keyboard is attached.
Apps are supposed to use the full screen using two confusing different interfaces for tablet and phone, and for landscape tablet and portrait tablet... why?
Multitasking sucks, Google has been crippling Andro
Re:Tablets themselves are dying (Score:4, Insightful)
Lenovo, Samsung, and Huawei have several Android tablet products each and keep updating at least one of them every year. Tablet sales are upparently strong enough that these three plus Amazon are staying in the tablet business. The reason tablet sales are falling is because most people who wanted a tablet already got one, and they're keeping them for a long time since the tablet market is not suffering from must-replace-ecery year fad.
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Google doesn't make much from hardware sales. They mostly do it to drive the tech forward and push Android development.
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Google doesn't make much from hardware sales. They mostly do it to drive the tech forward and push Android development.
And to increase their data mining footprint.
Never forget that.
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Lenovo, Samsung, and Huawei have several Android tablet products each and keep updating at least one of them every year. Tablet sales are upparently strong enough that these three plus Amazon are staying in the tablet business. The reason tablet sales are falling is because most people who wanted a tablet already got one, and they're keeping them for a long time since the tablet market is not suffering from must-replace-ecery year fad.
Also tablets are of limited use. They made sense when phones had 3-4" screens, but now they've got 5-7" screens the tablet doesn't really make sense any more. I've got a 2013 Nexus 7 and well, its only use is when I'm going on a long flight and I load it up with videos. Apart from that it cant do anything that my phone or computer cant do and both of those are more convenient and in the case of the computer, more ergonomic to use. For a lot of people, tablets have become single use devices.
Re:Tablets themselves are dying (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, Tablets are booming! They are just slightly smaller, have LTE radios now, and can make voice calls.
My 5.9" phone does everything better than the old 7" tablet. I just hold it slightly closer.
Re:Tablets themselves are dying (Score:5, Informative)
Most people just don't have a need for a device between their phone and their computer.
I won't disagree with the "most people," but I actually like the small phone that I carry everywhere and is okay for consuming content, 8" tablet for flights, known long waits (i.e., the DMV), and 17" laptop for work on the go. When not on the go, the laptop plugs into an external big display...
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Most people don't have need for "8" tablet for flights, known long waits (i.e., the DMV)", and for that matter "17" laptop for work on the go". Few people use a computer for "work on the go" and fewer still live a life of standing in long lines and continual flying.
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Tablet sales worldwide are down year over year, and have been for several years. Most people just don't have a need for a device between their phone and their computer. Not surprising that it isn't Google's priority.
Ahem.
Not for Apple, they aren't:
http://fortune.com/2017/11/03/... [fortune.com]
Google dumps useful product...how shocking! (Score:5, Insightful)
I loved my Nexus 7. Google support lasted only a couple of years. I still use SketchUp, which Google sold off several years ago. Google has a long history of creating interesting technology, and then dumping it.
Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Google has a long history of creating interesting technology, and then dumping it.
Alternatively put, Google has a long history of creating interesting technology that they couldn't profit from.
Re: Google dumps useful product...how shocking! (Score:2)
It's readily apparent that Google has never tried to turn one of their devices into a profitable prospect. They've never bothered with any traditional sales channels, they only support brands for a year or two, they seem to sometimes be "dumping" devices at or near cost.
Google makes great devices, but they have no desire to be a company that makes devices. They create ad services. As long as there's an Android ecosystem, Google has no need for their own devices.
Instead, they seem to step in when the market
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Exactly this. I'm not buying another google product because the support basically ends after two years.
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I was just getting pissed off at the N7 2nd for not getting updated to a more recent Android, and now this story pops up, how fortuitous. Anyone notice that Google just buried hotword detection settings? It went from being in normal device settings to being buried in your account Google settings. I want to turn that shit off for my device, period. I guess I'm going to finally invest the time in de-Googling my device. The only app I'll really miss is Gmail, which still works really well. I'll also kind of mi
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In general you should buy products from a company that is selling the product you want as one of their core products - you shouldn't buy products from a company when it's just one of their hobbies.
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You are SO right!
Driven by Sundar Pichai not the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple did the iPad pro and its sales of tablets went up. Android tablet sales also far outsell Google Chrome OS devices, and Microsoft has been doing 2 in 1s, which are really just tablets with keyboards and selling well.
So lets be clear here, this is not the market speaking. It isn't that everyone wants Android devices that are 6 inches, but not 8 inches.
The problem here is the head of Chrome OS, was Sundar Pichai, and he became CEO, and he decided that they would make ChromeOS their major OS puch on large devices. Android has been under seige ever since.
So Android is getting worse and worse with each iteration, targetting phone markets that don't exist with 512MB RAM and tiny screens, and the push to bigger tablet devices has been ChromeOS.
ChromeOS gets a sort of hacky Android support, which is supposed to please Android users, but is crap. And Android was supposed to help sell ChromeOS.
You can have a large tablet, it could fit 3 phone apps side by side in landscape.... but Android can't do that and ChromeOS just adds an awful legacy windowing interface, and lots of multitasing problems, to that mess.
What needs to happen here, is someone on Google board, thanks Pichai for his service, and Google needs to get serious about Android.
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No. Some of us have gotten rid of our phones and only carrying two devices around -- a 10" android tablet for entertainment and android apps, and 12-15" Microsoft Surface for work and windows apps. Why get a crippled smartphone device when a tablet is so much better? Portability? Not really...10" tablets are easy to carry around...put in pocket, I guess...but who does that.
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10" tablets are easy to carry around...put in pocket, I guess...but who does that.
Uh... everybody? You're the outlier here, not people who carry phones in their pockets. Are you a woman who carries a purse everywhere? If not, how do you carry your tablet, just in your hand? And do you always have a bluetooth headset handy, or answer calls on speakerphone, or just not make phone calls any more? And what 10" tablet can do phone calls anyway? Just curious since I don't recall ever hearing of someone ditching their phone for a tablet.
Re: The market has spoken (Score:1)
One thing is certain. Apple doesn't want ChromeOS, because it undermines their thick juicy margins.
So Apple is willing to sponsor shills to go out and badmouth ChromeOS, and push their religion so zealots stuck in stockholm syndrome limo will shill for free.
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I half agree with you.
It's shit.
My personal opinion is the same. My experience has been a generally glitchy platform.
It runs Android slower.
I don't know, but I would wonder if that is the case, is it because of how many ChromeOS systems are Intel versus ARM. The Android ecosystem is heavily ARM centric and Intel platforms can run it, but I just don't think they get the same attention.
It runs in landscape only,
At least our families lenovo chromebook does portrait
it has the fixed keyboard attached.
That is currently the choice of the hardware makers at the moment. Chromebooks that fold back (our fam
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Apple did the iPad pro and its sales of tablets went up
No, Apple's uptick in sales relates to offering one for $329.
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Yeah, things counting by units sold still show a decline, for everyone.
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"ChromeOS gets a sort of hacky Android support, which is supposed to please Android users, but is crap."
Dunno, the Chromebook I'm using right now runs every one of my desired Android applications better than my 2016 smartphone. Despite the dismal lowish-resolution non-touch screen, it's great.
Tablets could have been the ultimate gaming device (Score:1)
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I don't know what the heck is "questionable" about a netbook. ChromeBooks and similar Windows machines are simply cheap laptops. The only difference is that netbooks are supposed to sub-10 inch devices.
I think Netbooks took the big industry players by surprise. Where the likes of Microsoft are used to trying to dictate the market, netbooks were the opposite. Companies like Asus, MSI, and Acer started making cheap (sub $400), compact sub-notebooks. Which performance was limited, and you couldn't play Crysis on them, consumers liked how they could get a cheap portable computing device that was good enough for checking email, and watching movies on the go.
Microsoft and Intel were trying to push the likes of
Google stopped selling tablets (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that sort of analogous to a decade ago when Apple stopped selling servers? Meaning, practically speaking, they already weren’t selling them but finally admitted it to themselves?
Re: Altavista? (Score:1)
Their 'very poor laptop from the 90s' owns the education market, with a strong multi-vendor platform. It sucks to be Apple, and we all benefit. Except Apple.
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we all benefit
Of course, it does lock people into the Google story. Multiple hardware vendors is nice and all, but the software and services lock in is far more insidious than hardware lock in.
That's the shame of the market, you have to pick which of the three scary corporations you want to lock yourself into (google, microsoft, or apple). The only areas of computing where this isn't the case are large enterprises (that can roll their own stuff) and hobbyists/enthusiasts (that can use a rather untethered linux distro).
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It's what mothers give their kids to distract them when in a Stroller at the supermarket. Or anywhere. Or any time.
Decline of Vision Saving Prophylactics (Score:5, Insightful)
Young folk are crossing their eyes inward and squinting their way to near blindness.There's other blindness too, one of the tech articles [androidcentral.com] actually says, "due to lacking developer support and no proper optimizations for the OS on the big screen" Like it's rocket science. To me it's like saying, "Google tried (and failed) to make the Android OS -- which scaled up to read and use comfortably on a tablet, to their great astonishment and horror -- to be as vision-destroying and glare sensitive as smartphones displays riddled with car-key scratches. Which are now the 'gold standard', go figure."
Like bigger type is a bad thing. Weird.
Isn't this ridiculous to say, even to claim when trying to divine some grand corporate purpose? Let's take a real trip back in time, say 600 years to the 'golden age' of illuminated manuscripts, even early moveable type. People were not struggling to make type smaller, they were trying to communicate to a wide audience. This includes people over 30. People over 40 have some other interesting personal habits too that help them to dismiss the 'disadvantages' of tablets... such as women carrying purses and men with briefcases, which they don't lose track of. These weird people would think nothing of toting a piece of electronics around that held as many books as a library, or gave them that actual 'videophone' or even 'speakerphone' and 'electronic book' that was PROMISED decades ago in sci-fi literature.
But instead of just scaling up the smartphone by improving its sound quality (real speaker, low distortion, loud, anyone? Anyone?) and marketing it to the people who don't mind carrying large things around (yes 9" x 12" is large), they reproduced the worst sound the smartphone could make and crippled its cell phone capability, like a mean afterthought. It was a mechanism to force you to consume cell data plans. In order to achieve this we must discourage its ability to conveniently make voice calls.
Which is one of the reasons the elderly are starting prefer basic phones now. They have the smarts to use them but not the vision to see them, and don't need the aggravation and expense. With a direct campaign and decent product that easily and effectively replaces a cell phone they could have been convinced.
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"People over 40 have some other interesting personal habits too that help them to dismiss the 'disadvantages' of tablets... such as women carrying purses and men with briefcases, which they don't lose track of."
Since when is "over 40" an indicator of "women carrying purses" and "men with briefcases"? If anything, over 40 means less likely to use a tablet.
"(real speaker, low distortion, loud, anyone? Anyone?)"
No one. Mobile devices shouldn't be blasting, especially for those over 40...you know, those savvy
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It spoils the clean, flat look.
Big type is for old people, it doesn't fit in with the millennials' zoutgeit or something.
TFS is incorrect (Score:3)
It's a shame. I really like tablets. (Score:4, Interesting)
One of my need buddies says for him there's no space between a phone and a Subnotebooks, but I really like tablets. They're lightweight, have long battery time, easy to handle, fast, ideal for media consumption and this semester I've seen more people at college use surface tablets with styluses (stylii??) than I actually can count.
I've gotten a cheap 8"Asus for reading notes and surfing recently, after giving my daughter my yoga 2 10" for her traveling. She loves the 18 hours of battery and the fact that it's basically a performance notebook without an attached keyboard. She uses a thin Bluetooth on if she needs one, which isn't that often.
Bottom line: there is a solid market for tablets and Google shouldn't drop it off it IMHO.
Re: It's a shame. I really like tablets. (Score:1)
Google doesn't need to participate in the tablet market. They just need to stay out of the way, because there are four or five decent vendors selling a whole range of devices.
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Google has demonstrated a particular ineptitude at making tablets. They seem to think they can take a decent phone and just slap a bigger screen on it, and take away the voice dialing capabilities from the LTE radio and call it a day.
Then they are astonished when nobody buys it, in favor of products using Google's own (flawed for tablets) OS that are better, because they actually put some thought into what a tablet should be, and what it gets used for. Examples: Nvidia Shield K1, Huawei MediaPad M3. Bett
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The Nexus 7 was a fantastic tablet, though. It was fast (for it's time), had a great screen, and showed how awesome Android can be when the carriers and phone manufacturers aren't allowed to load it down with bloatware.
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The Nexus 7 was a fantastic tablet, though. It was fast (for it's time), had a great screen, and showed how awesome Android can be when the carriers and phone manufacturers aren't allowed to load it down with bloatware.
It unfortunately showed how terrible Android can be when the manufacturer forces more and more bloated "updates" to the device.
Sad (Score:1)
No one was making tablets (Score:2)
I have been struggling to find a decent 7" tablet for years. The giant Zach Morris phone brigade fucking ruined this entire market. Those assholes are too cheap to buy a decent tablet, so they'd rather buy a giant McPhone and then they can't figure out what a tablet is for.
I would give $1000 for a decent octacore Android tablet. The market is there, but it can't support all these poverty-stricken assholes driving the whole market into producing the cheapest shittiest devices they can come up with.
Re: No one was making tablets (Score:1)
Sorry, you'll jjust have to spend $500 or less on a Galaxy S, or a little bit less for an Asus Zenpad.
If you insist on spending spend stupid excessive amounts, go to the Apple Store.
No point when no access to competitive CPUs (Score:3)
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For 90 percent of people, Android tablet is a media consumption device. They browse the web, read books, and stream videos. For this purpose any modern ARM XPU core is fine.
Nexus 7 still going strong... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I had a Nexus 7 (2012) that turned out to have a bug in the flash wear-leveling that made it slower and slower to the point of being unusable. Google's fix was to periodically run fstrim, but they didn't update the linux kernel to support fstrim through an encrypted filesystem. I was almost glad when I finally dropped it and cracked the screen.
Google has been killing it for awhile (Score:2)
I have a LG android tablet and an iPad. I actually really liked the LG tablet, but it was a bit underpowered after awhile. For the past two years, there are no fast android tablets. Most at best are using mid range cell phone processors. For android tablets to work, then needed faster ARM chips. It has to be better than your phone or there is no point. It's a bigger form factor with larger batteries, bump up the CPU specs!
Both Apple and Microsoft have better tablets not because of superior software, bu
They didn't really sell them before (Score:1)
So, phones in the US generally have a lifespan of about two years, as that's what carriers subsidize. (After two years, you can just get a new phone.)
Which means operating systems running on those phones generally have a two-year outlook.
Hardware older than two years running a mobile OS... isn't as competitive as new hardware running the same mobile OS.
Google put out hardware, and let it sit for more than two years without a replacement. And usually didn't drop their price much after the first year, eithe
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I believe the data shows that the honeymoon is over for iPads as well as other devices.
I think the problem with tablets as a business market is that the use case is such that any old device can pretty much do what people want out of a tablet (read static content, play videos), there's no carrierd pushing for 'new free device every two years' and this means ultimately people aren't upgrading their tablets.
The tablet is an awkward middle. Too bulky and large to be on your person at all times, which means tha
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I don't trust Samsung or Amazon, and have no interest in being locked into their ecosystem and don't consider them trustworthy.
I'm surprised that you don't trust Samsung, but *do* trust* Google. Or maybe you are saying with respect to getting timely updates?
I personally am concerned about Samsung's market share, and I'm concerned that broadly, *no* other brand of Android device *consistently* has a track record of timely updates. Currently Motorola is occasionally with the program (e.g. the Moto X4 has had a pretty good track record so far, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule)
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I already had to reluctantly replace my Nexus 7 with an iPad. The screen cracked (my kid dropped it), and there just wasn't another Android tablet that I could find that is as good.
Besides, Google stopped pushing Android updates to it about a year ago, so you can't keep it patched without 3rd party software.