The way forward for Android tablets is tied to Samsung, not Google

The way forward for Android tablets is trying brighter as of late. 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 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 selection spans from price range 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 via the subsequent stagnation section? I don’t consider 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 economic system of apps, and foldables.

Over the course of Android’s historical past, Samsung has bulldozed its manner via many upgrades, forcing Google to react and add options to the inventory working system. Fast setting toggles, multiwindow, dual-SIM assist, stylus compatibility, and extra got here to Samsung’s units earlier than they launched on the Nexus or Pixel line-up or in any official inventory Android model. Despite the fact that Samsung wasn’t absolutely the first to implement every of those, it did it earlier than Google and insisted. Google had no selection 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, nevertheless it launched the primary Galaxy Tab in 2010 with Android 2.2 Froyo, manner 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 via One UI. Galaxy Tabs have gotten higher regardless of Google’s on-again, off-again dedication, culminating within the improbable productiveness and multimedia powerhouse that’s the Tab S9 sequence.

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

Samsung is aware of how one can promote merchandise. It is among the best-positioned tech firms on this planet with an official presence in practically 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 trade together with it. By occupying the second spot within the pill market and promoting greater than 20 million tablets a 12 months, the Korean large places itself able the place it might probably’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 improvement, it might probably’t ignore Play Retailer income from individuals who’ve purchased Samsung tablets.

That’s another excuse why the way forward for Android tablets is in good palms. If extra builders are desirous about making nice pill apps and video games or in adapting their present software program to a bigger display screen, that may solely be useful to the ecosystem as a complete. 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 at present are owed to foldables. Simply suppose again to a couple 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 compelled Google into a special path. It renewed the corporate’s dying curiosity in Android improvement 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 direction of a future the place extra of the units we stock will fold in some form to turn into smaller and extra moveable. 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 subsequent evolution in private computing, it has to maintain investing sources in foldable and pill improvement. It simply can’t afford to disregard that market.

The way forward for Android tablets is vibrant, although they will not be tablets within the conventional sense. They is perhaps giant slabs, they might fold in half, or they might fold on two or extra axes to turn into smaller phone-like units. Oh, they may 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 now not solely linked to Google’s capricious whims. There are larger forces at play and their identify is Samsung.