Android Tablets

Despite its success on smartphones, initially
Android tablet adoption was slow.[162] One
of the main causes was the chicken or the
egg situation where consumers were hesitant
to buy an Android tablet due to a lack of high
quality tablet apps, but developers were
hesitant to spend time and resources
developing tablet apps until there was a
significant market for them.[163][164] The
content and app "ecosystem" proved more
important than hardware specs as the selling
point for tablets. Due to the lack of Android
tablet-specific apps in 2011, early Android
tablets had to make do with existing
smartphone apps that were ill-suited to
larger screen sizes, whereas the dominance
of Apple's iPad was reinforced by the large
number of tablet-specific iOS apps. [164][165]
Despite app support in its infancy, a
considerable number of Android tablets
(alongside those using other operating
systems, such as the HP TouchPad and
BlackBerry PlayBook) were rushed out to
market in an attempt to capitalize on the
success of the iPad. [164] InfoWorld has
suggested that some Android manufacturers
initially treated their first tablets as a
"Frankenphone business", a short-term low-
investment opportunity by placing a
smartphone-optimized Android OS (before
Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets was
available) on a device while neglecting user
interface. This approach, such as with the
Dell Streak, failed to gain market traction with
consumers as well as damaging the early
reputation of Android tablets.[166][167]
Furthermore, several Android tablets such as
the Motorola Xoom were priced the same or
higher than the iPad , which hurt sales. An
exception was the Amazon Kindle Fire , which
relied upon lower pricing as well as access to
Amazon's ecosystem of apps and content.
[164][168]
This began to change in 2012 with the release
of the affordable Nexus 7 and a push by
Google for developers to write better tablet
apps. [169] Android tablet market share
surpassed the iPad's in Q3 2012. [