The way forward for 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 initiatives, 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 superb place now.

The working system is best tailored for large 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 way in which 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 way of the subsequent stagnation section? I don’t imagine so, and the rationale I’m optimistic about the way forward for Android tablets is just not 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 by way of 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. Although 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, nevertheless it launched the primary Galaxy Tab in 2010 with Android 2.2 Froyo, manner earlier than 3.0 Honeycomb was a factor. A yr 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 way of 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 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 centered and fewer capricious than Google, and it’ll maintain pushing for extra enhancements to the underlying working system. In any case, 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 the right way to promote merchandise. It is likely one of the best-positioned tech firms 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 all the trade together with it. By occupying the second spot within the pill market and promoting greater than 20 million tablets a yr, the Korean large places itself able the place it may possibly’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 may possibly’t ignore Play Retailer earnings from individuals who’ve purchased Samsung tablets.

That’s another excuse why the way forward for Android tablets is in good arms. If extra builders are curious about 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.

All the good issues we’re seeing with Android on tablets right now 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 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 simple to see that we’re transferring in direction of a future the place extra of the units we feature will fold in some form to develop into smaller and extra moveable. No matter type these foldables take, Android must proceed adapting to their bigger screens to outlive. So except Google needs 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 vivid, although they will not be tablets within the conventional sense. They may be massive slabs, they could fold in half, or they could fold on two or extra axes to develop into smaller phone-like units. 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.