Such a Shame

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Wan Chi Lau in iDevices, iPad, Natural User Interface, RainyDayBusiness, RainyDaySOHO, RainyDayThoughts // 0 Comments

“Oh no they didn’t”…but apparently Toshiba did. We heard that Toshiba had some interesting specs for their upcoming tablet. So we bounced over to the site to check it out. When we saw this page on our iPad, we had to laugh 🙂

It is one thing to trash-talk the competition when you can back it up with substance, but to throw out a challenge with nothing more than a CAD mock-up of the tablet and a non-specific release date…well, you are just asking for us to come take pot shots at you.

We have posted some thoughts on hardware companies looking to challenge the Apple iPad in the past. We have also discussed why we think Apple’s decision to not support Flash was pure genius. So it was amusing to us when we saw that Toshiba’s PR department had actually gone after Apple on the Flash front. Have the folks at Toshiba never read anything by Clayton Christensen? If not, they really should get themselves a copy of the “Innovator’s Dilemma.” The book outlines where strategies like the one Toshiba is using for their tablet go awry. Should Toshiba want help with how to get out of its predicament, it could consult Christensen’s follow up book, the “Innovator’s Solution.”

Regardless of when Toshiba gets around to shipping their tablet, they will still have the same problem as all the other hardware makers trying to compete with Apple in the tablet space…software. Hardware makers can only compete on feature and price. Apple can compete on three fronts: features, price, and SOFTWARE. This key advantage is what will keep Apple more profitable and the iPad the dominant tablet for the foreseeable future.

So Toshiba, we will be happy to take a detailed RainyDayLook at the tablet when it actually hits the market. In the meantime, we’ll continue to purchase iPads, surf the web, and…skip over the sites which require Flash (assuming they have not already recoded using HTML5). And yes, it is “such a shame” that the Toshiba tablet is vaporware because we are aquiver with anticipation for the day when we can see how it really and truly stacks up against the iPad.

May 1, 2011 Update: Apple’s No Flash strategy is proving to be the right one.