As tablets based on the new Honeycomb version of Android appear, critics have questioned Google’s moves to enforce a standard Android platform, and said there may be as few as 20 “real” apps for the devices.
Motorola’s Xoom tablet is due to appear in the UK next week, along with the Eee Transformer, but their ability to compete with the recently-launched Apple iPad 2 may be hurt by the shortage of tablet-optimised Android apps. Meanwhile, reports that Google wants to standardise Android hardware are causing alarm.
While Apple’s iPad 2 has 65,000 applications, excluding those designed for the iPhone. Honeycomb has far fewer, and commentators have been competing to offer lower numbers. While Steve Jobs criticised Honeycomb for only having 100 apps, during the iPad 2 launch, others have checked the Android Marketplace, and found reasons to whittle the number down further. Apple Insider counted 50, eliminating those that are not “featured for tablets”.
Williams ignored games in his count – which are included in Apple’s figure – however, the biggest factor is that the iPad has been out for a year, and built on the previous success of the iPhone’s App Store.
Sales of the Xoom have been weak in the US against the iPad 2, and Google may be losing friends in its efforts to shore up Android against fears of fragmentation, to make it more of a competitor to the iPhone. The company has been criticised for delaying the release of its Honeycomb source code, contrary to open source tradition, and new strictures on hardware vendors are apparently on the way.
DigiTimes has reported that Google is in talks with ARM to standardise hardware for Android tablets, and Business Week has said that Google is imposing “non-fragmentation” clauses on operators and other partners shipping Android devices, requiring them to limit the amount of software tweaking they do to devices before delivering them.
The most immediate problem for Honeycomb appears to be the apps, though: “No matter how many billions of dollars Google drains into the Android project to make it relevant in the tablet space, it will never succeed without a thriving app marketplace, ” warned Williams. “Maybe once Google releases its vice grip on the Android 3.0 source code and more tablets are out on the market, development efforts will ramp up.”
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How about using a source that isn't an obvious Apple fanboy? At least look at sources of information that are actively _trying_ to put together an honest list and not just trying to take a shot at Android.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/motorola-xoom/63511-officially-unofficial-optimized-honeycomb-apps-list-n-105-a.html
Well no shit... hey here's an idea... devs will when do their thing when Google releases the honeycomb source...
Google is just testing to see if they can get away with being as locked down as apple.
I've found plenty of useful apps that work well on my tablet. I really, really don't care if they are included in the official count. And I don't care about apps that aren't useful to me. I, cynically, doubt that the a significant proportion of the 65k iPad apps are useful...