Tablets at CES 2011: Honeycomb, Windows 7, and all the rest
It's been raining tablets here at CES 2011. No seriously, it as if the sky has opened up in Vegas and dropped touchscreen slabs with Android and Windows 7 operating systems on our heads. It's been nearly impossible to keep track …
Context & Ripple Effects
A year ago the tablet category was defined by isolated teases — Dell confirming an Android-powered tablet and TechCrunch surfacing HP's second, Android-based slate alongside the Windows one everyone expected. CES 2011 turns those one-off announcements into a flood: Engadget reports so many touchscreen slabs on the Vegas floor that keeping track is the hard part.
Two operating systems carry the wave. Numerous vendors show Android Honeycomb hardware — Google's first tablet-targeted build — while multiple others pin their designs on Windows 7, an OS built for mouse and keyboard rather than touch. That split matters because it puts every non-iPad vendor in the position of choosing between a mobile-first OS still being finished and a desktop OS being retrofitted.
First-order effects
- Every vendor showing a Honeycomb or Windows 7 slab is now competing directly with Apple's iPad on shelf space, with no vendor yet holding a differentiated answer to why a buyer should pick theirs over the next slab on the floor.
- Buyers and carriers face a fragmented field: Honeycomb devices ship against an OS version not yet proven on tablets, while Windows 7 devices carry the touch-usability penalty of a desktop interface.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's presence at CES via Windows 7 tablets underscores its lack of a purpose-built tablet OS, pressuring it to commit to one or cede the non-Apple slab market to Android by default.
- Component and carrier economics tilt toward Android: the platform's smartphone momentum — which analysts had already flagged as a confirmed power shift among major players heading into 2011 — gives Honeycomb tablets an existing app and network ecosystem that Windows 7 slabs must build from scratch.
Third-order effects
- If the CES 2011 pattern holds, the tablet market structurally becomes a two-OS race between iPad and Android, with Windows relegated to niche enterprise slabs until Microsoft fields a touch-native system.
- The volume of near-identical slabs points toward consolidation pressure: vendors without a software edge or carrier distribution will be squeezed on price, repeating the commoditization dynamic already visible in the Android handset market.
The trend: Tablets are becoming the second front in the Android-versus-Apple platform war, with CES 2011 marking the moment the category shifted from individual product teases to an annual OS-platform land grab.