Sony Announces Android 4.0 Coming To Tablet S and Tablet P Devices
We know all about Sony Ericcson's plans to bring Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to their entire 2011 smartphone lineup but what about those tablets Big Sony recently released? Well, an announcement on Sony UK's community forums …
Context & Ripple Effects
Sony's first Android tablets had a rough landing: the wedge-shaped Tablet S and the dual-screen Tablet P were only fully revealed at the end of August 2011 (the full unveiling of the S and P) after months of leaks around the S1 codename, and both shipped into a Honeycomb tablet market where buyers were already asking when — or whether — Google's next version would reach them.
The answer arrived via a Sony UK community-forums post rather than a press event: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is coming to both tablets. That aligns the tablet line with what Sony Ericsson has already committed to for its entire 2011 smartphone lineup, making the update promise a company-wide software pledge rather than a device-by-device decision.
First-order effects
- Tablet S and Tablet P owners now have a stated upgrade path off their launch software, removing the biggest objection to buying either device as of late December 2011.
- Sony's tablet division inherits the same delivery deadline pressure already placed on Sony Ericsson's phone teams, since any visible gap between phone and tablet updates would undercut the unified-lineup message.
Second-order effects
- Rival Android tablet vendors face pressure to match or beat Sony's public commitment, turning post-launch update timelines into a competitive talking point during the holiday sales window.
- A successful rollout would let Sony market the tablets' differentiators — the dual-screen Tablet P especially — against a current OS instead of defending aging software.
Third-order effects
- If vendors keep making these pledges under buyer scrutiny, explicit update commitments harden from goodwill gestures into expected purchase criteria across the Android tablet market.
- Ice Cream Sandwich's role as the version that merges phone and tablet Android raises the cost of slow adopters, since a lagging tablet line visibly diverges from the same vendor's phones.
The trend: Android tablet makers are shifting from shipping whatever OS a device launched with toward competing publicly on post-launch update speed as Ice Cream Sandwich unifies the platform.