Why Windows 8 tablets will beat Android

  

When you look at the tablet landscape, it doesn’t look like a very even battle going on. On one side you’ve got Apple, the Goliath, destroying the competition with its iPad. On the other side of the field you’ve got Android, slumping under Apple’s onslaught, suffering from low sales due to a number of factors, including high prices, low customer awareness (“What’s Android? You mean that Verizon phone? Droid does or whatever?”), and the dreaded fragmentation word.
Into this completely one-sided battle a new contender is about to be unveiled: Windows 8.
But hold on before you chuckle and shake your head. Let’s take a look at the hard facts of the industry. Microsoft is probably the most familiar presence in technology. Anyone who has ever dangled a toe into technology knows who and what Microsoft is. Not only that, but the vast majority of PCs run a flavor of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, easily the single most popular operating system in the world. That’s some brand advantage, and brand advantage has some serious clout when it comes to buying incentive and familiarity.
I mention this because Android isn’t the easiest system to learn if you don’t have any experience with it. It’s set apart from Windows (for obvious reasons), and while that distance distinguishes Google’s flagship OS as its own beast, it also creates a sense of confusion and frustration in non-savvy users. Apple, too, is different; but under the direction of Steve Jobs Apple’s iOS chased the “experience” and caught it, making the new interface hurdle matter less in the war for the hearts of users. Android hasn’t quite caught the experience and nailed it down yet.
Windows 8 won’t have to clear any hurdles of familiarity. Consumers already use it every day at work, and they come home and use it in the evening, too. It’s installed in many vehicles and devices, more than many would suspect. Some would say avoiding Microsoft’s reach is almost as difficult as avoiding Google’s on the internet; they wouldn’t be wrong.
Given this advantage, Microsoft has to capitalize on a few things, and do a few things right. Let’s hash it out, shall we?

Applications

Microsoft’s got everyone beat here. Documents are “Word docs” by default. Microsoft Outlook dominates email, from home to corporate clients. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, Internet Explorer is still the king of browsers. When you look around, Microsoft isn’t winning the game of applications, it’s running it. All Sinofsky and co need to do is keep that familiar app set going on the tablet. If you reduce the learning curve on the applications you use, people will be comfortable with your product. Introducing a touch interface is just going to make the experience seem new and wondrous, not a chore (unless they do it horribly wrong; a pen, anyone?)
As far as a base of applications, there’s not going to be the shortage that Windows Mobile has. While Windows 8 is technically a new operating system, it has its roots spread all the way back to Windows 3.11, when floppies were the thing and a GUI was future tech. Windows can take that familiarity to the tablet and make those tablet-conformed applications an old friend rather than something new to conquer. As it stands, with the Windows Store, and cross-platform Metro apps written in anything from C++ to JavaScript, Windows 8 is looking very strong apps-wise.

Fragmentation

The word that sparks endless pages of internet trolling and hate, fragmentation. A nightmare for Google, surely, fragmentation is what keeps you from having the latest and greatest update on your not-so-new Android device. Android proponents (myself included) like to play it off as something that may have been an issue before, but not something that’s rearing its ugly head now. That’s not entirely true, however.
Microsoft isn’t going to have this issue at all. Windows 8 is, well, Windows 8. It’ll be on your desktop, and it’ll be on your tablet. You won’t have to worry about applications being backwards compatible, you won’t have to upgrade to the latest Microsoft tablet to take advantage of the newest iteration of Windows or be left in the dust, except in the sense that the PC world has always had an end of the line for old desktops. Fragmentation won’t exist in Microsoft’s paradigm of the tablet world, and that’s a really good thing.

Usability

This was mentioned previously, but it can’t be underscored enough. To someone coming from an old Gateway desktop into a brand new Ice Cream Sandwich Android tablet, it’s a whole new world. A world fraught with frustration in many cases, a problem only exacerbated by the lack of tutorials and get-started help. Google and its hardware vendors assumed, it seems, that consumers buying Android tablets already had some experience with Android, or with Apple’s iOS in the worst case. That leaves a large demographic of users coming from feature phones with little experience with the internet baffled in the face of Android’s cold GUI.
Now, before Android fans come out like a pack of wolves, that’s not to say that Android has an insurmountable learning curve or isn’t in the slightest bit user friendly. Simply put, Windows has a huge advantage that it can capitalize on to make Windows tablets seem like home to users.

Price

If you peek around at the tablet ecosystem, it’s pretty easy to see why Android tablet sales are so low. If you take the above statements and then factor in almost a thousand dollars in some cases for a tablet that has no promise of a single update as soon as you walk it out the door, you should have a pretty good idea. Apple gets to set the stage for pricing with it’s mammoth lead in the tablet market, but Android tablets have yet to take advantage of this and undercut Apple’s pricing. Most Android tablets are woefully overpriced, and manufacturers even let carriers create exclusive contract-only devices that tie you into mobile broadband deals instead of WiFi-only devices that come in under the iPad in price. It’s corporate suicide to many, and such a turn-off that it seems like manufacturers and carriers alike are trying to make Android fail.
Microsoft has a huge chance here. Undercutting Android’s pricing across the board with its tablet offerings will give Redmond a mighty advantage, especially in this economy. The numbers show that consumers want tablets, and want them bad. It’s obvious that Apple is giving them the price point plus the ease of use to make Cupertino the overwhelming winner thus far. Microsoft’s familiar Windows interface plus an aggressive pricing model could put a stranglehold on Android tablets so tight they’ll never get their groove and take off.
The long and short of it is there’s room in the tablet war for a third contender, and Microsoft has a chance to really make a splash on the scene. Will it capitalize on all of its advantages, while avoiding its deal-breaking flaws? We’ll have to wait and see.