A survey of Australian PC vendors indicates that several are “wary” of carrying toomany Android tablet stock and that several manufacturers will dump Android tablets as soon as Windows 8 software for tablets becomes available in Australia mid-2012.According to both Samsung and Toshiba executives, demand for Windows 8 tablets could swamp sales of Android tablets leaving the tablet market to a combination of Apple iPad and Windows 8 tablets.
Eight out of 10 PC vendors approached by SmartHouse said that they anticipted Windows 8 tablets would outsell Android based tablets and that they would “seriously consider dropping Android” if Windows 8 tablet sales “take off”.
At the recent launch of a Samsung Window 7 Slate launch Emmanuele Silanesu, the head of Samsung’s PC Division said that he was confident that Windows 8 tablets “will prove highly popular.”
“There is a lot of Windows desktops out there and a lot of users want to replicate there existing desktop to a tablet especially among business users,” he said.
According to DigiTimes hardware vendors such as Acer, AsusTek and Dell may withdraw from the tablet market next year to concentrate on Windows 8 tablets.
Justin White, Product Marketing Manager of Notebooks at Toshiba, said that the Windows 8 tablets will “defiantly” put pressure on demand for Android based tablets which have only managed to capture less than 14% of the Australian tablet market according to GFK data.
DigiTimes said that several vendors were cutting back on the reordering of Android based tablets, a move that suggests the PC vendors cannot see any profit in tablets because they do not have a compelling content offering like the existing trio.
Acer, who is currently struggling in the notebook and PC markets due to falling sales in Europe and the USA, claim that they committed to higher-margin products, than just PCs, with the company still looking to break into the smartphone market.
Meanwhile Asus is looking to quad-core tablet in 2012 to deliver profits.
PC vendors believe that Windows 8 tablets will deliver higher profits while delivering an expanded application capability to the high volume of applications that are already available on a Windows platform.
DigiTimes said that Windows 8 on tablets may allow tablet companies to raise prices because of the attractions of Microsoft’s offerings, especially in apps – but they might find themselves in the same price-war struggle as they have been in the Google Android field, where Samsung has so far dominated sales.
