Getting to the point
Dell announced last week that it would be launching its ten inch tablet exclusively in China at first. One of the reasons given was to give Android developers in the US time to make apps that make the product worth buying.
In an interview with Cnet at around the same time, a Dell exec revealed that he thinks the US Android tablet market is immature and there is confusion about what the point of an Android tablet is. What was unsaid was that Android tablet OEMs are struggling to give consumers a compelling reason to buy their products over Apple's iPad, which has a much more coherent proposition.
Apple has much less of a presence in the Chinese market and, according to Dell, the consumer is much more savvy, which is a bit counter-intuitive. A subsequent piece derived from the same interview also features insight from an analyst, who thinks US consumers need more education on the difference between tablets and PCs, and thus not to buy on specs as they do PCs.
But what is the difference between a tablet and a PC? Initially it was thought that portability was a big factor, but research shows that tablets are used predominantly in the home. The real appeal of tablets is ease of use. They have the touch-screen and intuitive interface of a smartphone, but much more screen real estate. Meanwhile they have the ‘instant on' feature that notebooks lack, and are just generally a bit newer and cooler - not having the ‘productivity device' label notebooks are encumbered with.
Tablets sit exactly in between the smartphone and the notebook, but merely filling a form-factor gap is not enough of a reason for most consumers to buy one. Tablets need to have a point - a compelling use-case - and I'm increasingly of the belief that it will be as a living room second screen, and more specifically as a TV companion device.
We've seen from the relative failure of initiatives such as Google TV and Apple's tentative approach that bringing the Internet to the TV itself is a difficult business. This isn't a technical problem, it's a user experience one. When we slump in front of the telly most of us just want to mong-out - pic a piece of content and stare at it - as we unwind, or forget our problems, or whatever.
Yes, we like choice, but we want the process of finding what we're going to stare at for the next hour or two to be quick and conclusive. Ideally our TV would just pick the perfect programme to suit our taste and mood, but that's something clever algorithms may never be capable of doing. Once that choice is made, and we're sitting comfortably with whatever paraphernalia completes the experience for us, then we might think about talking or surfing the net, but only then.
So, as I gathered from the panel discussion on digital content I attended last week, we're up for indulging in interactive behaviour while we're watching TV, just not with the TV itself, which is where the second screen comes in. Right now a large proportion of Twitter traffic is people spewing their stream of consciousness thoughts about whatever they're watching on TV, predominantly sent from smartphones.
But I can see tablets replacing the smartphone in this case. Not only is it easier to type on a tablet, the greater real estate opens up the possibility of managing several social streams at once, or even streaming some other content at the same time. We're already getting apps designed specifically to help people interact with some TV shows - especially those that require things like voting - and a ten inch screen allows a lot more interaction.
In fact, social TV is a big growing trend in the tech world right now. From a commercial point of view it opens up new ways for broadcasters to interact with - and ultimately profit from - its audience, such as charging for voting, market research, viral marketing, etc. Many social TV apps are designed for smartphones, but as the tablet install-base grows and developers people are using them predominantly in front of the TV, the potential of the tablets larger screen will be exploited.
Sky has announced that, from next month, its customers will be able to access all their Sky channels via their PCs and iOS devices via a new service called Sky Go, so this increasing symbiosis between the TV and mobile devices works both ways. As the tablet searches for a raison d'etre, the answer looks increasingly tied to solving the puzzle that is Internet TV.
