Tablet Computers: It’s All About the Apps

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Someone whom you know likely has purchased, or wants to buy, a tablet computer, even if he/she can’t say precisely why.

Today’s tablet is almost literally a tabula rasa, or blank slate. Unlike a smartphone, a personal media player (PMP), a notebook computer or nearly any other gadget or electronics component that you can buy, today’s tablet has no single specific purpose. In many ways, one size does fit all.

And, of course, today’s tablet isn’t to be confused with older “convertible” tablets. Today’s tablets are multifunctional devices that have a single-slab construction, a 7-inch-to-10-inch touchscreen and a mobile-specific operating system. Convertible tablets are full-service notebook computers on which the screen, which can be operated with a finger or a stylus, can flip and fold flat, single-slab style.

Given that broad potential—the lack of expectation for you to use a tablet in a certain way—it’s little surprise that tablet sales are booming.

Also of little surprise is the fact that when you say “tablet” chances are that you’re talking about Apple’s iPad or iPad 2. Less than 2 years after Apple introduced its tablet in April 2010 and 25 million iPads and iPad 2s later, at least 12 competitors have jumped into the market. Some already have jumped out, and none has made headway against the iPad’s success. That means that you face clear choices when it comes to choosing a tablet.

THE BIG APPLE. According to investment bank UBS, Apple will sell 37.9 million iPads globally this year and 53 million tablets next year. UBS says Apple’s biggest competitor, Samsung, will sell just 5 million Galaxy Tabs this year and 7 million tablets in 2012. The bank predicts that no other company will sell even half as many tablets as Samsung.

What do those big-business numbers mean to you? Like in any gold rush, some businesses attempt shortcuts to make a quick strike and, when they fail, they disappear. In the tablet business, it’s become almost immediately clear what the long-term brands are likely to be and, more important, from whom you want to consider purchasing.

Like Windows and Mac in the desktop- and notebook-computer worlds, tablets quickly have settled into two warring, incompatible camps—Apple’s iPad, which runs Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, and devices that use Google’s Android operating system.

Apple iOS, of course, is the same operating system that’s used in the iPhone and the iPod Touch PMP. By the time that you read this, Apple will have made available its iOS 5 mobile operating system. Like iOS, Google’s Android originally was designed to run on smartphones and, like iOS, has been repurposed to run on tablets.

Unlike Apple, however, Google devised a special tablet Android operating system that’s called Honeycomb, which at press time had progressed to version 3.2. Honeycomb speeds up operations and enhances graphics for a tablet’s larger screen, compared with the versions that were designed for smartphones. But which Honeycomb-powered tablets will remain as the market shakes out is a question mark.

There’s no guarantee that current Android-based tablets will adopt Honeycomb. Further, if you want to upgrade your older Android operating system to any newer 2.x version or to the 3.x tablet-specific Honeycomb OS, you should know that that isn’t possible in most cases. If you can’t upgrade, of course, that means that your tablet will be unable to run more-advanced applications. Less sophisticated tablets that are loaded with earlier Android versions will continue to be made; those models don’t have powerful enough processors to run Honeycomb anyway.

BEING ANDROID. Compared with the iPad 2, some Android-based tablets have faster processors, which means that applications and videos open and run faster. They also have expandable memory, which means that you aren’t limited to the storage capacity that’s built in. And most include Adobe Flash compatibility, which is the format that’s used widely to play back Web-based videos.