Comment by Macha
1 month ago
> To buttress his argument that Android can work on laptops, Samat pointed to the OS being "super successful" on tablet computers.
In like 2015 before all the OEMs lost interest when it turned out tablets didn't have phone-esque upgrade cycles maybe? Isn't the Android tablet market basically on life support from occasional Samsung refreshes at this stage?
> Android tablet market basically on life support
I dont think so, it's more active recent year. There are a lot of good Chinese tablet(from well known brand). Xiaomi, lenovo, vivo, oppo and oneplus all have "flagship" tablet(running high end CPU, with very good screen and build quality)
Yeah, I think in proportions, tablets have always been a small niche — Not small in absolute numbers, but in comparison to phones. And since companies that make tablets also make phones, the phones always get all the priority.
Nope, because outside US, where Android dominates, most folks also go for an Android tablet, between Samsung, Xiomi or Huawei.
I think usually people that only see iPads around come from the few markets that are dominated by Apple.
I'm not from the US and Android also dominates phones in my country, but not tablets.
As you can see, in Europe Apple only has around 46%, 49% if worldwide, with the remaining being shared across all Android vendors.
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/tablet/europe
If you go world wide in another data set, it is around 54%
https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/global-tablet-market-share/
Even considering the more generous number, that makes half of the tablets being sold across the planet are not iPads.
It's pretty bad. The only place it sort of thrives is Amazon's tablets and android ereaders.
They are all (AFAIK) based around android 9 or 10.
You are seriously almost better off just doing something like a windows tab converted to a linux machine.
Touch and Linux is still a terrible experience (vs W8/W10). Windows 11 replaces the useful W10 gesture (edge screen swipe) for win+tab with a widget for ads so I have no hopes in MS
Linux has multiple touch-based interfaces these days, including Phosh, Plasma Mobile and the upcoming GNOME Mobile. The interfaces themselves seem to work quite well and are broadly comparable with AOSP (or sometimes better). The Firefox browsing experience (based on the desktop version of Firefox with custom "mobile" tweaks) and things like the software keyboard tend to still be subpar compared with what's available on AOSP.
It's been a while since I've tried it. I assume the experience got better with ubuntu putting in around ubuntu touch but honestly I can't say if it's much better.
> They are all (AFAIK) based around android 9 or 10.
That’s not what I see when I lookup tablets. My old cheap Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2022 version) has Android 14 with security patch from May 2025.
My SO bought a cheap Xiaomi tablet this month with Android 15 and patch from August 2025.
I am on a Samsung Android tablet
I've got a Lenovo tablet. It's bad - I only use it to read music and it's so laggy. It was cheap but I feel I'd have been better off getting a used ipad.