Nvidia CEO Disappointed With Android 3.0 Tablets

After researching for the past 3 weeks on what tablet to get, playing around with as many as I could get my hands on I got an iPad2 this week. Flame me all you want but it is the most polished of them all at this point. I get my Droid Charge tomorrow so I'll have a sweet 4G hotspot to use it with (I live in Boston). Although I've heard Verizon has been having issues with its hotspots ie staying connected via the Thunderbolt and Charge. I've been with RIM for 3 years now but after using the PlayBook, which I had high hopes for, I was completely disappointed with it and that was the last straw for me.

Very true, 3G tablets are just a money grab for the telecom industry. Wifi is much better, cheaper, and more practical.

Nvidia is the one who made the tegra 2, a chip weaker than the A5 in the pad. A chip that can't even decode high level video content.
For me, the tegra 2 is the weak point in the current tablet.
And the pricing, but that's something else.

iPad 2 is useless to me for reasons other than my hatred towards Apple products. No flash support, no expendable MicroSD slot, and no USB support for external hard drives. What the hell is the point of 1080p support if you can only fit 3 movies before the puny onboard flash memory runs out?

After shopping around, I put down my deposit for the Eee Pad Transformer and the keyboard dock last week. So it may not be as polished as an iPad 2, but the additional functionalities more than make up for its shortcomings. At least this tablet has USB ports that supports external storage so I can actually take full advantage of the 1080p capabilities with my 1TB My Passport.

i will refuse to purchase a tablet...i don't see the point

apple does have the best tablet and the best phone. which is unfortunate for users... the alternatives are frightening as of now. i hope windows 8 forces tablet makers to compete with the ipad.

This CEO is right. The tablet market outside of Apple is flopping due to poor introductory products, prices and marketing. I think the general public knows about the iPad, but ask about any other tablet and they'll probably stare you down with a blank face.

"It is a price point problem," he said in an interview with Cnet. "The baseline configuration included 3G when it shouldn't have. … Tablets should have a Wi-Fi configuration and be more affordable. And those are the ones that were selling more rapidly than the 3G and fully configured ones."

Usually I think Huang is full of excrement, but I 100% agree with this particular point. Very few people want to take out a 2 year cellular contract for something they will mostly use in their own home.

"The Nvidia leader also reiterated his confidence in the future of ARM CPU's continued rise in computing. "If you take a look at the number of devices that are being shipped today, there are far, far, far more ARMs computers being shipped than there are x86 computers being shipped," he said"

Amazing what some people seem to consider "computers" today...

I have both the iPad 2 and Asus Transformer. My wife was high strung on getting the iPad 2 and I caved in but I wanted a more complete system and this was offered with the Asus transformer. For one the iPad does not play 1080p video any better than the Transformer unless its re-encoded in H264 BASE Level and in this case both of them can play it well. The UI of Honeycomb is so much nicer and enjoyable to use and as far as Apps go, there are apps to pretty much do anything you need to on the Asus. The one big advantage in apps right now on the Apple tablet is Games. There are some really nice games available and the lack of them on the android tablets really is big. The honeycomb browser is much more pleasing to use since all web sites work and work well. I can’t even go check my sons hockey schedule on his teams website since the league created it in flash.

It's a computer you can hold in your hands when you don't have to do much input (surfing, reading email, etc. media), with a screen much larger than your smartphone. Do you see it now?

Look up the definition of 'high strung'. You're using it incorrectly. You meant 'high' or 'strung out'(about not).

Technically a smartphone is a computer.

Same here... I got it couple of weeks ago, and I am loving it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Wikipedia is your friend.

Huh, I have a Droid X, have no problems with it, fast, stable, big screen, can download apps, browse web, check email, etc, etc ... iPhone has less features (hardware) but more apps but I don't usually put to much time into apps except for the Nook App and a few games. There are far more choices on the market for phones right now than the iPhone and many of them have more features, better hardware and even some with good polish. Apple no longer has the best phone, it is just "a" phone. Android phones are the number 1 selling phones in the world, iPhone has just been in the market longer.

As to tablets, there are now a few good Honeycomb tablets out there other than the XOOM which when it was first released was only 3G. Personally, I think that hurt the XOOM sales more than anything. No one wants to pay a monthly service plan for a tablet when they are already doing so for their phone. A large number of ipad sales are wifi only, so until the wifi only tablets came out iPad still had very little competiton in the market. Plus the XOOM was a verizon only product vs spread around the retail market. Until Honeycomb tablets are in Walmart, Target, etc you will still see their sales as low.

Also, an observation about retail. I went to Bestbuy to check out the new Acer Honeycomb tablet. The iPad is right in the isle in the Mac section. Easy to find. Then you have 5 - 6 small tablets in the mobile section on the isle. But the Acer Honeycomb tablet, the only tablet in the store that spec wise is even a match for the iPad was on the back walls near the monitors in the PC section. Product placement is big, until the Honeycomb vendors put some thought into how they place their devices in stores with the retailers, they will have limited success. If the Acer was across the isle from the iPad, and all someone has to do is turn around to look at it, it would have greater impact since its features (hardware better than iPad) and price (less than comparable iPad) is very competitive.

You connection must be bad. Some words were dropped out of your statement:

apple does have the best apple tablet and the best apple phone.

Yes. Apple does have the best Apple products out there. What's your point? Their integration with Gmail, calendar and maps is much worse than Android devices. Oh, I think I know why...

I still don't understand the hype about tablets of any sense. I personally feel it is an extremely niche market.
I am gonna get a phone... might as well do everything the tablet does so I just have one device instead to two to lug around.
Maybe I am wrong about the tablets, but when I checked them out at the local stores they are just large smart phones without the phone.

I dont understand this tablet fad going around. Tablets are like those rainbow-dye t-shirts all those rainbow hippies used to buy... tablets target a certain group of consumers... i for one do not follow under that category.. Iphone / Laptop / Gaming desktop. What's the freaking point in a tablet? No usb, flash is horrible.

Maybe you do not have a sense of size? Good luck putting a 7" or 10" screen in your pocket. How did you not notice that? Were you standing far away with nothing for size reference, or did you assume it was just really tiny people checking them out?

The dude has a point. Companies are all trying to compete with apple at/over apples price range and that is the wrong way to go.

I for one, dont like the ipad simply because Id rather have flash on a tablet. I already made the mistake of buying a flashless android 2.0 tab, and it sucks not having flash. Skyfire is a mess. Ipad is the most polishes and the easiest to use and things like that, but all the limits is what make it inferior to the rest. And wifi should always be an economic option.

tablets have a chance to compete fairly well against the ipad, but not at the price ranges they are trying to nail you with. Apple does make a solid product, and if they ever release a flash capable ipad, I guarantee itll be the best/fastest selling product of all time.

I was meaning they "the tablets" are large. But I don't see anything that they do different than a smartphone. They do less than a smartphone because they don't include a phone.
Is the tablet something I am going to do school work on? prolly not. Is the tablet something I am going to do general work on? prolly not. If I need a larger screen than a smartphone I have my desktop or a laptop.
I just don't see the market for tablets beyond glorified toys.

@Lamorpa
Tablets. For those with horrible eyes...

...other than for the vast majority of users who only surf and read email, etc. 95% of the time, who do not want the bulk and weight of a keyboard, mass storage, etc., portability, handheld form factor, longer battery life, etc. What's not to see?

Having burnt through 2 laptops while in University, the tablets are a welcoming change for me. I don't know if you have noticed, but most laptops these days look like they were designed by retarded chimps. My first laptop was a $1500 Lenovo ThinkPad. The motherboard on that PoS overheated TWICE within a 14-month period. First time it was covered under my warranty so I got it replaced for free, and the second time it was outside my warranty so I had to buy a new laptop.

My second laptop was a $900 HP Pavilion. Whoever put the damn thing together should be taken to a back alley and shot 3 times in the back of the head. First of all, it had a 64-bit processor, but the chimps at HP loaded it with a 32-bit OS. I didn't even think to check the OS until a month after when I couldn't return it anymore because who the hell expects a 64 bit laptop to come preloaded with a 32 bit OS, especially whne it had 6 gigs of RAM? Second, the battery completely died out on me 6 months after I bought it where it couldn't hold a charge anymore. Even in its brand new condition, the battery life was a pathetic 2h30m at best if I turned all the power saving options on. The nail on the coffin was over a year after I bought it when the cheap $0.50 fan they put in my laptop was no longer able to vent enough heat to prevent the graphics card from overheating 10 minutes after you turn the damn thing on. That's another $900 down the tubes for me.

My third laptop was a $400 netbook, powered by Atom. Using that PoS was probably the most painful 3 months of my life. The hardware was way too low tech to support an OS like win 7, and retailers don't give you the option to downgrade to XP because MSFT no longer offers support for it. By then I was almost done with University so I said it to the mobile computers altogether and spent $1500 on a self assembled gaming desktop.

The honeycomb tablets are under $500, comes with low-power Tegra 2s so they don't emit a whole lot of heat. Battery life is averaging 8 - 16 hours (Eee Pad). It comes loaded with Polaris Office, offers 1080p capability which the netbooks don't. The OS was specifically designed for mobile processors so the performance is very smooth compared to windows 7 on an Atom CPU. With full USB 2.0 support for external storage you can easily carry all your media with you on portable drives. Basically, tablets are superior to $500 laptops/netbooks in EVERYWAY conceivable except for software support. If you don't need specific work related softwares and just want a portable device for everyday word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, web browsing, and watching movies, the honeycomb tablet is a way better choice than a laptop for the same price point.

Bingo! I don't even have a smartphone... 3G or 4G. I don't want to pay $15-$60 extra each month for a phone internet connection. I have wifi in my house, I have wifi at work, I have wifi in friggin McDonalds, my doctors office, and my local car dealership.

WIFI should be the PRIORITY.

I don't see the point of android or iOS tablets. Their just like smartphone without the phone and a bigger screen. Windows tablets make more sense because I can use my windows programs instead of feature limiting apps.

I don't see the point of Android or iOS tablets. There just like umbrellas without the long handle and canopy. Umbrellas make more sense because I can hold them overhead and they they have features like largeness to keep the rain off me and are lightweight.

I agree with most of the statements above... not big on tablets, because i think they cost too much.. i wouldn't mind having one in the den as a quick web browser..., but not for more than $250. The previews i've seen of Honeycomb look WAY more polished than Apple's grid of icons...
The Asus eeePad Transformer is the tablet that currently most intrigues me, as the price range, at $400, is very good, although, i'd need to keyboard attachment, so i'm looking at back to $500-$550 again, nogo...
The one statement above I don't understand is why 1080p support is so big to everyone, your screens are 1280x800, so all you need is 720p playback... the iPad 2 is 1024x768?!, LOL... unless you're running HDMI, 1080p playback isn't necessary on the tablets (until at least those new Samsung screens just announced come out)

I pay 25 bucks a month for mobile 4g internet on my phone with tmobile, I pay 30 bucks a month for cable internet for my desktop, and I DO NOT want to purchase any more internet connections for my tablet!!! Wifi and tethering through my phone are the only realistic options.

Does one person need to spend 100+ dollars a month for a gazillion different wireless connections to the internet? Tablets have got to deal with this issue...

Well, I'd probably pick up a Transformer... if I could find one to pick up.