SUMMARY: While many enterprises in the past year have turned to Apple's iPad for their business tablet needs, Microsoft is looking to change that in 2012 with its Windows 8 operating system. Despite a host of challengers entering the marketplace throughout 2011, Apple's iPad remained the top choice among consumers and businesses in the market for a tablet. However, 2012 could witness the beginnings of a seismic change in the tablet landscape: If everything proceeds according to rumored schedule, Microsoft will release
Windows 8 on tablets in addition to traditional PCs—forcing Apple into a harder
fight to preserve its dominant market share.
Certainly Apple enters 2012 in a strong position
among business users; according to research firm IHS iSuppli, the company will
hold an estimated 65.6 percent of the global tablet market by the end of the
fourth quarter 2011. During its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, Apple
claimed that 93 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPad.
Meanwhile, Apple's highest-profile rivals for
corporate dollars, including Research In Motion's PlayBook, continue to suffer
from anemic sales. During its Dec. 15 earnings call, RIM executives reported
the company shipped about 150,000 PlayBook tablets during the quarter.
The iPad benefitted from an evolving trend toward
allowing employees to bring their personal devices into their corporation's IT
infrastructure. This is commonly referred to as bring your own device, or BYOD.
But it also came at something of a cost, as IT
administrators scrambled to find a way to integrate the iPad while maintaining
their organization's overall policies.
"A lot of IT administrators wanted to keep the iPad
out of the enterprise, and then they were sort of forced to follow along," Kurt
Roemer, chief security strategist for Citrix Systems, told eWEEK in an
interview. "They needed to find a way to have an acceptable level of security
on a consumer-grade device."
Many of those organizations have solved their
security and compatibility issues, helped in large part by third-party vendors
anxious for their own piece of the burgeoning iPad market.
Salesforce.com,
Citrix and other companies all pushed out iOS apps for business users, each
offering their own brand of functionality.
"Tablets are the new way of interacting with
anything," said Peter Coffee, vice president and head of platform research at
Salesforce. "Tablets are not just replacements for PCs. They're a new master
key that we're going to use to unlock data and access function in pretty much
every environment you can imagine."
Those factors combine to make Apple a considerable
opponent for any tablet manufacturer looking to carve off its own piece of the
market in 2012. But Microsoft and its OEMs are going to give it the old-fashioned
college try, with a variety of tablets running Windows 8.
Windows 7 tablets currently have a niche presence—by
the second quarter of 2011, research firm Strategy Analytics pegged their share
at 5 percent of the global market—but businesses whose employees need Windows
applications continue to show interest in them.
"We wanted to find one that was lightweight and easy
to carry," said John Titus, IT manager for Hospice & Palliative Care of
Cape Cod, whose organization has deployed 30 Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 tablets
running Windows 7. Security was also a factor: "All our drives are encrypted;
all these tablets have biometric devices on them," Titus added.
With Windows 8, Microsoft hopes to expand that niche
into something more substantial. While its exact plans remain unconfirmed, Acer
is reportedly planning to release at least one Windows 8 tablet before the end
of 2012. Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman has told the media that her company
(which already produces Windows 7 touch screens) would "certainly" be in the
Windows 8 tablet business.
Acer and HP almost certainly won't be the only ones. The question is whether Microsoft and its Windows operating systems have what it takes to create a blockbuster tablet.
Windows 8's user interface is bifurcated into two separate-but-linked
environments: one filled with colorful tiles linked to applications, supposedly
ideal for tablets, alongside a more traditional desktop familiar to regular
Windows users. The tile interface hews to the same "Metro" design language that
also governs Microsoft's Windows Phone and its newly launched Xbox Live
dashboard; in turn, that has spread rumors that Microsoft will eventually
attempt to unite its disparate platforms into a single, interoperating
ecosystem.
In any case, Microsoft has promised that Windows 8,
most likely due late in 2012, will offer a "no compromises" environment, even
on thin-and-light form-factors such as tablets; if that promise comes to
fruition, then Windows 8 could help further define how tablets are used for productivity
and communication. Certainly some power users and IT administrators would
appreciate the ability to run heavy-duty Windows applications through an
interface more suited to touch than Windows 7.
Microsoft is already ramping up its efforts surrounding the Windows Store, the long-anticipated apps storefront for Windows 8.
"Enterprise developers have been asking about their
path to market with Metro style apps," Ted Dworkin, partner program manager for
the Windows Store, wrote in a Dec. 6 posting on the Windows Store blog. "And,
in turn, IT administrators have been asking about deployment and management
scenarios, such as compliance and security."
In a bid to further appeal to the enterprise-tablet audience, Microsoft will give businesses direct control over app deployment, including the ability to restrict employees from downloading certain apps.
Some analysts seem optimistic about Microsoft's chances in the business tablet space.
"Microsoft, perhaps with the help of Dell, HP and
others, could also make a play for the enterprise tablet market, an area where
Amazon [with its Kindle Fire] and even Apple lack the sales and marketing for
those potential customers," Andrew Eisner, director of community and content
for Retrevo, wrote in a December blog posting.
Others see Microsoft's task as a more complicated one.
"I do think Microsoft can deliver a no-compromises
tablet," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group, "the
question is whether buyers will pay for one and what this will do to laptop and
desktop PC sales where these [tablet-focused] features might not play as well."
Although he thinks Windows 8 tablets won't truly hit
the market in a broad-based way until 2013, "depending on pricing and features,
[Microsoft] could get a late fourth quarter 2012 spike."
Still others think that even 2012 is too late for Microsoft to make a concerted tablet push.
"For tablets… Windows really isn't a fast follower,"
Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder wrote in a Nov. 29 corporate blog posting.
"Rather, it's (at best) a fifth mover after iPad, Android tablets like the
Samsung Galaxy Tab, HP's now-defunct webOS tablet and the BlackBerry Playbook
tablets." In addition, he added, Windows 8 will face pricing pressure from the
cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook tablet.
Before Windows 8 tablets begin arriving on store
shelves, other tablets will spend 2012 trying to make significant headway
against the iPad. In February, RIM will deliver a long-awaited software update
to the PlayBook, complete with integrated email, a new video store, calendar
and contact apps, and better tethering between the 7-inch tablet and the user's
BlackBerry smartphone.
Whether that will allow the PlayBook to increase its
market share remains to be seen. RIM is planning a new generation of BlackBerry
"superphones" for release in 2012, running a similar QNX-based operating system
to the one present on the PlayBook; presumably, RIM will push its freshly upgraded
tablets as part of its renewed ecosystem.
Research firms estimate that Amazon's Kindle Fire
will swallow up a sizable portion of the Android tablet market in 2012. In a
December report, IHS placed its share at 13.8 percent of the global
media-tablet market, well ahead of Samsung (4.8 percent) and HTC (1.3 percent).
The $199 Kindle Fire is first and foremost a portable vending machine for
Amazon's e-books and streaming content. Although it can store and display
documents, and run productivity apps through Amazon's Android apps storefront,
it is being marketed primarily as a consumer device. Therefore, even as the
device snatches up millions of consumer dollars, it seems unlikely that IT
administrators and procurements specialists will run to buy it in bulk for
employee use.
Samsung, Motorola and other Android tablet makers
will, meanwhile, continue to fight for their own share of the business. A
growing collection of productivity apps makes Android a more viable platform
for businesses, and analysts predict that Android's overall market share will
increase in 2012. However, the next version of the iPad—which, if Apple holds
to its release cadence, will appear early in the year—could force those various
Android manufacturers into playing another round of catch-up against an
aggressive competitor.