It seems that Google has decided to get in to the iPad/slate market, and who can blame them? The Nexus wasn’t exactly a huge seller, but according to Google it has made a positive contribution to their sales, which in our book is a success, and the encouraging sales for the iPad makes a move to the slate format a no-brainer.
According to an interview in the WSJ with the chief executive of US telcoms network Verizon Wireless, Lowell McAdam, Verizon is working with Google to catch up with AT&T. As unlike in the UK where O2 has competition from Orange and Vodafone for the iPhone and iPad market, AT&T has a five year exclusive contract with iPad and iPhone.
The work is part of a deepening relationship between the largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers and Google, which has carved out a space in mobile devices with its Android operating system. Verizon Wireless last year heavily promoted the Motorola Droid (the Milestone in the UK), which runs Google’s software.
“What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?” Mr. McAdam said in the interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We’re working on tablets together, for example. We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.”
We think the iPad form factor is a good format and we’d like to see how Android scales to a larger form factor. We also think potentially this could be the form factor that opens up Android to the wider software developer market. Many of the big boys (Microsoft, IBM etc) have held back from the iphone and Android devices, and this could be the form factor that brings them into the market. And Android with it’s open format should attract more of the traditional software manufacturers to jump into the market than with the closed proprietary Apple apps market.