Why The Nexus Tablet Cannot Beat The iPad

The Kindle Fire has showcased that a product well differentiated with a strong user experience running Android has the potential to challenge the iPad’s shipment numbers. However, Amazon had to create a unique Amazon controlled version of Android to make the Fire approach its potential. Google may not do what is necessary to achieve a similar result.

Out from Apple’s shadow

Google appears as a company that has lost its way. They started out with the goal of making the world’s information available to everyone. They have since wandered off to doing everything from operating systems, to self-driving cars, to alternative energy products. Steve Jobs, before he passed, even commented that the firm was being known for its lack of focus and its tendency to bring out junk as a result.

When Apple wanted to bring out the iPod, the product that redefined that company, they didn’t copy anyone else and the end result was a line of products that positively define the company. Android was Google’s attempt to copy Apple first with the Nexus Phone and now with the Nexus tablet. The phone never approached the iPhone in terms of success and the tablet will likely end up the same. No firm, including Google, can become better at what another firm, like Apple, is expert at unless Apple badly stumbles, which appears unlikely at this point. But even if they were successful, all they would be is a clone of that earlier effort.

In the end, all Google is doing is trying to be a better Apple, which wasn’t their initial goal and the effort just suggests they can’t innovate themselves anymore.

The quintessential Google tablet

So if it’s not a clone of the iPad, what could Google do instead that would better define an effort representative of them? Google is about providing the world’s information to anyone, anytime and anywhere.  Why not, instead of focusing on a device that, at its core, is about playing music and videos, design a device that was optimized for information capture and discovery? Make the Google tablet great at capturing and indexing moments and in learning about its user so that it can offer up content kind of like Amazon and Netflix offer up stuff based on what you’ve purchased or watched before.

Tie the experience back into a social network so that the training and activity by one user can be, with permission, spread to other users making the entire eco-system grow synergistically in both power and accuracy and you could have something that could both be uniquely Google’s and it might even have the potential to overshadow the iPad. In the end, though, Google should be focusing more on finding a way to build products that accentuate its strengths rather than Apple’s and build a future that isn’t stolen from someone else.

Beating the iPad?

In the end, I actually think this is a bad question because Google and Apple are fundamentally different companies. Rather than beating Apple or Microsoft, for that matter, Google should still be focused on becoming a better Google. Keeping that in mind I think they could build a personal technology product that could eventually overshadow Apple, I just don’t think they get there by first copying the other company.

Rob Enderle in Business Products on December 21