Can HP do what SmartBoard can’t and actually make teachers want to use tech in the classroom?
Tech in schools is hard. My own (anecdotal) experience tells me that very few teachers actually use their SmartBoards; certainly none of the teachers I know go out of their way to plan their lesson around something that might fail. We can attribute the success of SmartBoards in NY classrooms primarily to marketing, not actual teacher participation.
Let’s talk about all these new tablets. Motorola’s got the Xoom, HP’s going to unveil some WebOS tablets in a few weeks, everyone and their mother is trying to put Android on a device that’s bigger than a smartphone. All of that is great! I love competition.
However, 90% of the tablets you saw at CES will never see the light of day. Companies have their manufacturing partners throw together a reference device or two with their logo on it. If someone sees it at the show and places a bulk order for a few thousand pieces, great! You’ll get it three months after we have cash in hand because we need to build them all.
Those that will come out (like the Xoom) will run the latest version of Android, the first version designed for tablets (called Honeycomb). Honeycomb looks like a tablet OS designed to make you feel cool while using it. Its design direction feels like they thought, “Hey, let’s make the user feel absolutely badass while using it.” And that’s cool! I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on it to give it a try. They did that because they know that the enthusiast market is the one they need to get excited about this product, and enthusiasts know how many choices they have.
Meanwhile, the iPad is going to outsell them all. It isn’t even going to be close. Apple isn’t selling millions of devices to enthusiasts. They’re selling millions of devices to people who aren’t enthusiasts. Some of that is marketing but more of it is good user experience with little fluff. Can you see your grandmother using a tablet with Honeycomb on it? I sure can’t. As far as Apple is concerned, Android can keep their enthusiast market. They’re just a footnote on the market Apple is actually going for.
Geek is a finite market. Grandma is not.
With at least one publisher working on digital magazine content, you would think that the focus would be on making this content available to as many platforms as possible. Development environments like Adobe Air allow cross platform applications, which suits the content providers nicely, but will Apple play ball with such an open format? That’s the reason everybody is holding their breath for the Januar 27 Apple event; their tablet is arguably the most anticipated device in this as of yet unproven form factor and if they don’t support something cross platform, that could have huge ramifications for publishers.
