The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 2, 2012 20:34 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet by cmccabe
Parent article: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Years ago I was reading about the glorious future when TVs would have converged with gaming consoles, laptops, desktop computers, and DVD players. Ten years later, and we still have separate boxes for all those things. Why? Because CPUs are cheap, and each of those devices appeals to a different market.

You forgot the important detail: space near the TV is quite cheap. Space in your pocket is not. Note that this convergence with TV is still happening—albeit not as fast as a lot of guys are expecting.

But WRT devices in your pocket. Most popular camera today? iPhone (and Androids are more popular then most dedicated devices). Most popular camcoder? iPhone, again (the same not about Android). Dictating machines, pagers, etc—they all are replaced by mobile (which is used today as camera more often then it's used as phone!). But some things can not be stuffed in the mobile because it must fit in your pocket. For these there are tablet - and I don't think there are space in your backpack for two such devices (well, some people carry around Kindle and iPad, but most prefer one or another and increasingly it's not Kindle).

Nowadays, the iPad is the thing which everything "obviously" has to converge with. However, the reality is, people like their separate boxes.

In their pockets and backpacks? No, they don't. Not how failed convergence attempts mostly come from stationary devices while mobile devices exhibit totally different pattern.

And I'm not saying everything will be sucked unto iPad: backpacks are larger then pockets, there are space for couple of devices (or may be even more). But to have separate eInk reader and color movie capable general purpose tablet? No, most people will choose just one—and it'll not be Kindle.

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