Android 3.0 codenamed Honeycomb is a tablet-only operating system (OS) and a recent report by DigiTimes suggests that according to “sources from upstream touch panel players” its unstable performance may benefit Apple’s iPad 2 and other tablet PC vendors.

Due to Android 3.0 currently still having several issues that are unable to be resolved immediately and which are causing unstable performance in terms of operation, HP, which is ready to launch its TouchPad tablet PC with its own OS, webOS, in the second quarter, and RIM, which will soon launch its PlayBook with BlackBerry OS in the middle of April, as well as Apple, are expected to gain benefit from the mischief of Android 3.0, the sources pointed out.

Apple products are known for tight integration between hardware and software. iOS for iPhone and iPad provides a consistent and stable user experience which has proved to be one of Apple’s biggest strengths in marketing new products.

When Apple comes out with a new product customers already know how to use them. Millions of iPhone users already knew how to use iPod touch even before it was launched and the same concept worked when iPad was introduced. This is because Apple has worked very diligently to unify the OS for their tablet and smartphones.

Google has however taken another route where they have to now focus on developing and supporting two operating systems which might end up taking more time to bring together. Android chief Andy Rubin recently in a blog post said, “the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones.”

Apple’s second gen tablet has seen a successful launch and is expected to sell 30 Million iPads by the end of 2011. While on the other hand DigiTimes reports that iPad competitors like Motorola “shipped around 700,000 Xoom tablet PCs before the end of March”. Further the report speculates that Motorola might be preparing to launch its next-generation tablet and therefore not planning orders past June.

{AppleInsider, DigiTimes}

According to the survey results reported by Fortune, 87% of Android developers view fragmentation as a growing concern for the mobile platform. It’s no secret that iOS developers have played a huge role in making Apple’s platform a huge success. Apple provides its developers a unified, single store experience which allows them to focus on developing great apps while customers know exactly where to go to discover their apps.

Android is considered a “open platform” which gives users and developers lots of options. However, now the same options and alternatives have become a concern for the developers. If you were to find Android app you could look up the Android Market on your phone, search Amazon store or even browse GetJar. So, this may leave the end user thinking that the default Market is not an exhaustive list of apps and force then to look for alternatives. This in turn makes things increasingly difficult for developers as they try to fight ‘app discoverability’ in more and more online stores.

Even though Apple’s App Store has been widely criticized for not being ‘open’ it offers a great experience for both, the end user and the developer.

Google recently also went against the concept of being ‘open’ when they ‘closed’ the source code to its Android 3.0 Honeycomb platform for the tablets to prevent use on smartphones.

Google has been trying to restrict its handset partners from making too many modifications to the Android OS and discouraged them from such practices in an effort to counter the fragmentation issue.

It will be interesting to see how Google tries to keep the developers happy and offer solutions which makes developing for the platform easier.

{Fortune via AppleInsider}

The iPad is Apple’s biggest product to date, and possibly the most successful consumer product ever launched. Steve said that the competition laughed at his company when they labelled the iPad “magical,” but it has turned out to be exactly that. Steve said:

“When we said the iPad was magical, people laughed at us. But it’s turned out to be magical. And people questioned whether it was an ‘unbelievable’ price — well ask our competitors.”

Steve also mocked the future competition when he made a note of the 65,000 iPad applications available through the App Store, as opposed to the 100 currently available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab running Android Honeycomb.

Pushing Android to the lofty heights of version 3.0, Honeycomb is being developed entirely with slate machines in mind, and isn’t expected to be available on any phones at all – which begs the question of what will Android on mobile handsets do when it hits version 3?

So what’s the video show? Having watched it a couple of times through I find myself very much agreeing with Endgadget’s Tim Stevens. The best thing I can say about the OS is that it’s nothing at all like the Android we’ve come to know over the last couple of years. Out go blocky graphics and poor fonts and in comes some flashy whizz-bang transitions. If this is what most of the iPad competitors will be shipping with then I’m a happy choppy. Competition is good, remember!

One sour note though – don’t expect your shiny new Samsung Galaxy Tab to get an update to Honeycomb. The new hotness requires a dual-core CPU to function and, for now at least, that means an Nvidia Tegra setup.

Still, it’s a reason to upgrade I s’pose!

The video is admittedly rather clever, and a little bit funny. It pans around a museum display of the different types of tablets in history and lists one pro and one con for each. For example, it shows the tablets of stone on which the 10 commandments were written and notes that while its pro is excellent durability, it also has zero flexibility as it can’t edit.

The teaser is for Motorola’s upcoming CES 2011 announcements, and although it doesn’t give much away, Engadget points out that the buzzing bee seen towards the end of the video is a sure sign that the new tablet will run Android Honeycomb.

I’m still not sure how Motorola’s video points out a flaw in the iPad – iOS is an incredibly popular mobile operating system that millions of users have grown to love – why would Apple change a winning formula for a larger device when it can just modify its existing one?

The Motorola tablet certainly looks a nice size (very thin), and seems to perform well from the videos we have seen. And it ran a very cool 3D Vector version of Google maps, which is certainly nifty.

But this device is yet another fragmentation of the Android eco-system and User Interface, for one because it has no physical buttons at all. A minor point, but all this tends to make developers and users lives more difficult when you also factor in the multiple, very different versions of Android on devices, screen sizes, and performance characteristics. All things that Apple with its iOS devices manages to avoid.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has not really impressed the way that Apple’s iPad has. But it is easy to see now why Apple would want to get their iPad 2 revision out sooner rather than later, so that they can start working towards iPad 3 for the end of 2011 / beginning of 2012. If Android as an OS can be made to behave more at home on tablets, and dual core fire-breathing tablets start hitting stores next year then the iPad might finally get a run for its money.

Do you think Motorola’s tablet could topple the iPad? Or are you expecting something special from Apple and the iPad 2?

{Wired}