Tuesday, January 04, 2011 6:05:43 PM
Eric Savitz
TECH MUSINGS
Jan. 4 2011 - 4:09 pm | 2,220 views
Just because of every company on Earth is jumping into the tablet computer space doesn’t mean that everyone now has the market figured out.
Indeed, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair declares flatly in a research note today that, in fact, “most tablets are junk.”
Blair writes that history will count April, 2010, as the birth of the modern tablet, and 2011 the year that everyone else jumped on board to the trend. But he contends that the Apple(AAPL) iPad “thus far remains the only game in town largely because many of the tablets hitting the market are junk, for lack of a better word.”
Blair asserts that most tablets “are underpowered, poorly constructed and largely not ready for prime time…CES this week will showcase more junky tablets and many will fall by the wayside and be largely forgotten about the time we get to the holiday season in the fall.” Blair says he’s looking out for offerings that are actually competitive with the iPad. And they’re coming, he says.
Blair notes that the Samsung Galaxy Tab has been the best marketed and most worthy competitor so far; but he notes that the price of the device has been cut by $100 at many retailers, “suggesting sales have been lackluster.” Most of the new entrants, he contends, are 7-inch models based on Android that are “closer to smart phones in their overall offerings.” At CES this week, more than 20 new models will be unveiled, Blair writes – and that is probably a conservative estimate.
Blair contends the two biggest variable for the market will be the timing of the debut of the Honeycomb version of Google’s (GOOG) Android, and the market reception for pending offerings from HP (HPQ) and Research in Motion (RIMM). Honeycomb, he says, will allow creation of 10-inch Android-based tablets that he thinks will compete more directly with the iPad. (Motorola Mobility (MMI) is expected to unveil a Honeycomb based tablet tomorrow.) The HP and RIMM tablets, he adds, will “give us a sense of whether there is room in the tablet space for more than two operating systems. He adds that Microsoft is also likely to make a play for the market, but adds “we aren’t hopeful for them.”
Blair has three suggestions on how to play the trend: Apple, Broadcom(BRCM), which suppliers a variety of chips to tablet makers, and Nvidia(NVDA), which he asserts is “garnering the lion’s share of the designs for Android-based tablets based on Honeycomb.
Read comprehensive coverage of CES from Forbes at http://blogs.forbes.com/topics/ces/
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