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Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Nobel Push PC Tablet Makers Off The Table

By | November 18, 2011 | 3 comments
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DigiTimes recently reported that many PC makers, like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer, are planning on phasing out their tablet departments by the end of 2012. The reason being, they can’t compete with Apple’s overwhelming market share, nor are they able to afford to contend with the low-priced Amazon Kindle Fire or Barnes & Nobel Nook. There is just no room for them at this party.

Ever since it first hit the market, the iPad has been top-dog in the tablet industry. PC makers and tech companies have all tried to produce the “iPad killer” to no avail. Currently, the iPad commands about 67 percent of the market share. While PC tablets have slowly been chipping away at that number, it is still a hard race to run for companies that can easily make profit by focusing on what they do best, personal computers.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble recently released a low-cost alternative to the full-fledged tablet. The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are priced at half the cost of the iPad and offer plenty of features to reel in consumers. Both companies can stand to offer their device at such a low price because they can make up for it with purchasable content. DigiTime’s unnamed sources predict that the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet will someday be offered for free. PC tablets can’t compete with that type of undercutting.

To be honest, it is disappointing to see so many companies throw in the towel. Apple needs competition if they want to continue to make waves in the tablet market. They are like the kid on the block with the fastest pitch that no one wants to play ball with because he is too good. No one will be impressed with Apple’s fastball if no one is watching them play.

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About Lory: Writer of all things app related, traveler of the space-time continuum, baker of really great cookies. Follow me @appaholik

  • Anonymous

    not really, if its apple against ‘them’ then ‘them’ will always lose if its fragmented into a dozen pieces.  i have an ipad, and would love to get an android based tablet, but not interested in wasting time/money figuring out which one’s better than the other and/or buying one that’ll be out of business in a few months or a year.  the ipad DOES need competition, but it needs SERIOUS competition, not fragmented wannabes fighting over scraps and looking to lock consumers into their own little sandboxes or introduce issues in their platform that will make developers headaches when then try to make things work for as many as possible.

    • http://www.nerdshowandtell.com nerdshowandtell.com

      Lol because fragmentation really helped apple win the pc vs mac/apple ii era, or the more recent smartphone era where they are now getting beat.. Fragmentation doesnt mean a damn thing when there is money to be made, app devs will go where the numbers are, you can already start to see the shift just like i remb back when we used to have apple ii’s in our schools and soon they were pc.. hows that new netflix app workin out for you that android got? If fragmentation is what you call this, ill take it, along with hot new devices every few months instead of a one size fits all device that comes out once or twice a year.. The competition has been getting better everyday at producing new devices, faster.. So apples days of having a device that stays ahead of the pack are gone, and just look at the last 2 iphone releases – when they have competition apple fumbles and can’t keep up.

      • Anonymous

        i cannot make heads or tails as to what the hell you just said :)  the only thing holding apple back from world domination is their stupid prices and sense of superiority.  i’m not a sheep of either camp personally.  i find the mac OSX to be pretty lame, unless you just want to be told what to do and not worry about as much.  I do think the iOS is pretty well done though, especially for consumer uses.  I have an android phone and and iphone, the stupid android frustrates me on a daily basis with its stupid things/issues, but the iphone sucks for anything corporate, its saving grace will be when google releases more of its corporate components for easier use on the ios platform.  

        don’t know anything about netflix, hate streaming anything on anything.  

        but yes, i do like buying one device and having it be supported for 2 or 3 years.   call me not a sheep for gobbling up every POS device that a company tweaks and re/releases every other month to milk consumers.

        that being said, i do hope amazon buries all the android competitors and there’s at least one android beacon that sets a standard.  amazon is powerful enough to bitch slap apple around, as would be google if they stopped messing around and released their own tablet rather than just a buggy os for them.