The future of Android tablets is tied to Samsung, not Google

The way forward for Android tablets is trying brighter nowadays. For greater than a decade, Google tried, failed, retried half-heartedly, deserted its large-screen tasks, pivoted to Chrome OS then reverted that call, all with the eye span of Discovering Nemo’s Dory. Regardless of all of that, each Android on tablets and Android tablets are in a great place now.

The working system is best tailored for giant screens, Google apps are trying good on them, and there’s sufficient traction to get extra third-party builders concerned. From a {hardware} perspective, your alternative spans from funds tablets just like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite all the best way to the high-end Galaxy Tab S9 Extremely, passing by Xiaomi Pads, the OnePlus Pad, and Google’s very personal Pixel Pill.

So sure, as somebody who’s had an Android pill since 2011 and championed them for years solely to lose religion in 2020, I can’t resist feeling giddy about this redemption arc.

Is that this an phantasm, although? One other brief upward spell earlier than we trudge by the following stagnation section? I don’t imagine so, and the rationale I’m optimistic about the way forward for Android tablets isn’t Google. It’s Samsung, despite Google. And my argument is threefold: Samsung’s persistence, the financial system of apps, and foldables.

Over the course of Android’s historical past, Samsung has bulldozed its means by many upgrades, forcing Google to react and add options to the inventory working system. Fast setting toggles, multiwindow, dual-SIM help, stylus compatibility, and extra got here to Samsung’s gadgets earlier than they launched on the Nexus or Pixel line-up or in any official inventory Android model. Regardless that Samsung wasn’t absolutely the first to implement every of those, it did it earlier than Google and insisted. Google had no alternative however to standardize the function and supply official APIs for everybody.

The identical factor occurred with tablets. Once more, Samsung wasn’t the primary Android pill maker, but it surely launched the primary Galaxy Tab in 2010 with Android 2.2 Froyo, means earlier than 3.0 Honeycomb was a factor. A 12 months later, Google introduced Honeycomb.

Since then, Samsung hasn’t let up, releasing one new pill after the opposite, insisting on offering a greater large-screen expertise, even when it needed to implement it by itself by One UI. Galaxy Tabs have gotten higher regardless of Google’s on-again, off-again dedication, culminating within the unbelievable productiveness and multimedia powerhouse that’s the Tab S9 collection.

So even when Google decides to vary focus once more sooner or later, even when it abandons the Pixel Pill line-up, I belief Samsung will maintain its head within the sport. The corporate is extra targeted and fewer capricious than Google, and it’ll maintain pushing for extra enhancements to the underlying working system. In spite of everything, the 2 corporations should cooperate in the event that they wish to deal with the iPad-sized elephant within the room.

Samsung is aware of easy methods to promote merchandise. It is among the best-positioned tech corporations on the earth with an official presence in almost each nation, logistics to make any competitor envious, and gross sales numbers that talk for themselves. That’s leverage.

So when Samsung decides to stay with a product or a function, it shifts the whole business together with it. By occupying the second spot within the pill market and promoting greater than 20 million tablets a 12 months, the Korean big places itself able the place it may’t be ignored. Builders flock to customers, and Samsung has customers; it’s so simple as that. Even when Google decides that its personal pill gross sales numbers aren’t sufficient to justify sustained growth, it may’t ignore Play Retailer income from individuals who’ve purchased Samsung tablets.

That’s one more reason why the way forward for Android tablets is in good arms. If extra builders are occupied with making nice pill apps and video games or in adapting their present software program to a bigger display screen, that may solely be helpful to the ecosystem as an entire. Granted, we’re nonetheless removed from Samsung having an Apple-like stranglehold on pill builders, however we’re nearer to it now than we’ve ever been.

The entire good issues we’re seeing with Android on tablets right this moment are owed to foldables. Simply assume again to some years in the past; Google was all about Chrome OS on tablets then poof! None of that mattered anymore. The introduction of the primary foldables and Samsung’s Galaxy Z line-up pressured Google into a distinct path. It renewed the corporate’s dying curiosity in Android growth for bigger screens and kickstarted the Android 12L challenge, which was later merged into inventory Android.

It’s straightforward to see that we’re shifting in the direction of a future the place extra of the gadgets we stock will fold in some form to change into smaller and extra transportable. No matter type these foldables take, Android must proceed adapting to their bigger screens to outlive. So until Google desires to drop the ball on the following evolution in private computing, it has to maintain investing sources in foldable and pill growth. It simply can’t afford to disregard that market.

The way forward for Android tablets is vibrant, although they might not be tablets within the conventional sense. They may be giant slabs, they could fold in half, or they could fold on two or extra axes to change into smaller phone-like gadgets. Oh, they might even be wearable or projectable!

That’s to say, I really feel like we’ve reached a turning level within the story of Android on bigger screens. And the way forward for the platform is not solely linked to Google’s capricious whims. There are greater forces at play and their identify is Samsung.