Coming Soon: The iPad’s Death from a Thousand Papercuts
At the end of March, days after the release of the iPad, I put out a post here trumpeting that I felt the iPad was doomed to fail. Of course, my words have been used against me quite a bit since then (even by avid iPad user and fellow SiliconANGLEr, John Furrier), but I think I either didn’t do a good job of explaining myself in that post, or Apple religious zealots don’t really care the context and will actively work to stamp out resistance to adherence of their faith.
Whichever the case may be, I think what I was trying to say is that the killer combination of Android and plentiful Chinese hardware hackers will result in an insurmountable amount of competition for Apple.
Without re-typing my full Anti-iPad Manifesto (I go over a lot of this ground in that post), I’d like to debut another trophy for the mounting evidence against total iPad domination: yet another Android iPad-like device to come out of the Chinese hardware hacker realm. From Karon at shanzhaiben:
This is a 7-inch Tablet PC, from the exterior view, imitation is the Apple iPad, design by VIA 8505, based on ARM 9 core development. Frequency is 400MHz. 7-inch touch resistance screen (resolution: 800×480), supporting G-Senser. The standard storage 2G Flash and 128M DDR2 memory, built-in camera and Wifi, is pre-installed Google Android 1.7 version of the system. Body weight of 388 grams. Currently, according to company official record of the seminar, can now accept the [orders], in Shenzhen, users can go to the vendor under the Department personally test prototype. Availability is expected in the June volume. Prices in more than [$73.21].
Between the release of this product and the last one I’ve profiled here at SiliconANGLE, the competitors have been almost uncountable (the two weeks following the release of the iPad, I counted fifteen Android competitors debuted alone). And, as I said in my “manifesto,” the iPad may be a commercial success for Apple, but it won’t see majority marketshare like the iPod or iPhone due to a death by a thousand papercuts from these sorts of competitors.
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