Usability

This was mentioned previously, but it can’t be underscored enough. To someone coming from an old Gateway desktop into a brand new Ice Cream Sandwich Android tablet, it’s a whole new world. A world fraught with frustration in many cases, a problem only exacerbated by the lack of tutorials and get-started help. Google and its hardware vendors assumed, it seems, that consumers buying Android tablets already had some experience with Android, or with Apple’s iOS in the worst case. That leaves a large demographic of users coming from feature phones with little experience with the internet baffled in the face of Android’s cold GUI.

Now, before Android fans come out like a pack of wolves, that’s not to say that Android has an insurmountable learning curve or isn’t in the slightest bit user friendly. Simply put, Windows has a huge advantage that it can capitalize on to make Windows tablets seem like home to users.

Price

If you peek around at the tablet ecosystem, it’s pretty easy to see why Android tablet sales are so low. If you take the above statements and then factor in almost a thousand dollars in some cases for a tablet that has no promise of a single update as soon as you walk it out the door, you should have a pretty good idea. Apple gets to set the stage for pricing with it’s mammoth lead in the tablet market, but Android tablets have yet to take advantage of this and undercut Apple’s pricing. Most Android tablets are woefully overpriced, and manufacturers even let carriers create exclusive contract-only devices that tie you into mobile broadband deals instead of WiFi-only devices that come in under the iPad in price. It’s corporate suicide to many, and such a turn-off that it seems like manufacturers and carriers alike are trying to make Android fail.

Microsoft has a huge chance here. Undercutting Android’s pricing across the board with its tablet offerings will give Redmond a mighty advantage, especially in this economy. The numbers show that consumers want tablets, and want them bad. It’s obvious that Apple is giving them the price point plus the ease of use to make Cupertino the overwhelming winner thus far. Microsoft’s familiar Windows interface plus an aggressive pricing model could put a stranglehold on Android tablets so tight they’ll never get their groove and take off.

The long and short of it is there’s room in the tablet war for a third contender, and Microsoft has a chance to really make a splash on the scene. Will it capitalize on all of its advantages, while avoiding its deal-breaking flaws? We’ll have to wait and see.