One other thing, if Android/Google execs read this: for the love of God go ahead and admit that there is a need for tablet apps. It's the first step in solving the problem - admitting you have a problem. As long as you have the attitude that phone apps work "just as well" on tablets, developers will have the exact same attitude and will not care as much. It also "helps" that you don't really want to emphasize tablet apps in their own categories, so devs have little incentive to build them.
Also, wake up and promote this heavily, before you lose the tablet market forever. The iPad advantage is growing by the day, and Windows 8 tablets are coming, too, and even though I'm not a fan of Windows 8, I'm almost certain Microsoft will be able to brag about having more apps for ARM tablets than Android has for tablets at the time, because I'm sure they will be just as aggressive about it as they are with WP7 apps. You simply can't afford to stay on your asses and let apps come to you. I know that's Google's attitude towards it right now, because it's obvious from how Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt speak at events. Change that! Fast!
It's simply inexcusable that you've launched Honeycomb more than a year ago and all you have to show for it is a few hundred tablet apps. The Nexus tablet will not change that if it's only 7", even if it's a popular tablet. I don't think devs will bother to make "tablet apps" for a 7" tablet. They'll just leave the phone apps, which look rather well on 7", and Kindle Fire is an example of that.
So I don't know what you have to do, pay each developer, hold a $100 million contest for Android tablet apps, reject their apps if they don't also make a tablet version within 6 months - whatever. Just do it and be very aggressive about it, because you've lost a lot of time with the Honeycomb launch failure, and now you only have little time before Amazon's ecosystem or Microsoft's ecosystem become bigger than Android on tablets, too. And that's without even mentioning the enormous and growing iPad ecosystem. That's why you need to start being pro-active about tablets apps like yesterday.
I strongly agree. I've been averse to owning a tablet for a while; generally, I prefer to have a laptop: if I want to do work on it, I can. I've recently tried a different approach: use the laptop (/tablet, now) for all my entertainment needs, and my desktop for work (in order to encourage myself to do more/better work on my desktop).
So, to facilitate that, I grabbed a cheap HP TouchPad, and flashed the (admittedly still reasonably raw) CM9 ICS build onto it. ICS itself is pleasant: the notifications system is great, the multitasking is easily on par with WebOS, and the action bar is a good step forward. The screen wasn't so great, but I knew that going in; most of the "real" Android tablets have beautiful hardware.
The state of the apps, however, is shocking. Even Facebook and Twitter haven't bothered to build tablet apps. I believe Google is somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place here, however, and it boils down to an argument I've often thought entirely facetious - fragmentation. While they introduced decent APIs in ICS for making apps that work well on both phones and tablets, the vast majority of phone hardware out there is still running Gingerbread or older. Meaning that developers can't use those new ICS APIs, because their apps will no longer run on most user's devices.
I don't know how Google can address that easily, but I'd wager it proves to be a significant impediment to those trying to target Android tablets: either they do the whole thing manually in Gingerbread, or fork their codebase into an ICS version, and a Gingerbread version. Neither is an overly pleasant solution.
(for the record, I ended up drooling over/buying an iPad 3. The apps are much better)
They actually have a compatibility package[1] to let apps use the new tablet layout classes on Android versions back to 1.6. Developers have no excuse.
Given that webOS has some fantastic tablet apps, why on Earth remove it from the Touchpad and install ICS which has a lot less tablet apps? I see people doing this all of the time, and frankly it confuses me because they just by-pass the best feature of the Touchpad: webOS.
I should clarify that: I agree that WebOS is an amazing OS. I had a great time using it. I really liked the Enyo framework, and most of the apps were well optimised for tablet. Despite that, the app ecosystem as it stands is dying, and I wanted to see what things were like on the other side of the fence. Installing Android was straightforward (I'm going to develop a nervous tick with relation to the iPad in a few months, no doubt).
Note that you don't remove WebOS when you flash Android onto a Touchpad; it sets itself up to dualboot :).
I know it's dual boot, but I also know a lot of people who just bought a cheep Touchpad to install Android, and never booted into webOS. Many never even gave it a chance, and hence are missing out on arguable a better tablet experience than ICS (it certainly has more tablet-optimized apps).
As for the webOS ecosystem dying, I'm willing to wait and see what happens with Open webOS later this year before I agree with you there. It's certainly in a lull with no new hardware on the way, but once Open webOS hits that issue is no longer relevant as I can install it on any existing hardware that supports Android.
> _So I don't know what you have to do, pay each developer, hold a $100 million contest for Android tablet apps, reject their apps if they don't also make a tablet version within 6 months - whatever_
One thing they can do is promote good apps, not the way they're currently doing it (e.g. Staff picks, Top developer), but with something like the Apple's approval system, but not to the extreme of "the app is either approved or denied". I was thinking more like the dev can pay a fee to get his app reviewed (UI, performance, ...etc) and when "approved", it gets a symbol (check mark, star, whatever) and put on a category of "approved" apps. This will probably encourage more devs to work more on their apps to get them promoted.
Also, wake up and promote this heavily, before you lose the tablet market forever. The iPad advantage is growing by the day, and Windows 8 tablets are coming, too, and even though I'm not a fan of Windows 8, I'm almost certain Microsoft will be able to brag about having more apps for ARM tablets than Android has for tablets at the time, because I'm sure they will be just as aggressive about it as they are with WP7 apps. You simply can't afford to stay on your asses and let apps come to you. I know that's Google's attitude towards it right now, because it's obvious from how Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt speak at events. Change that! Fast!
It's simply inexcusable that you've launched Honeycomb more than a year ago and all you have to show for it is a few hundred tablet apps. The Nexus tablet will not change that if it's only 7", even if it's a popular tablet. I don't think devs will bother to make "tablet apps" for a 7" tablet. They'll just leave the phone apps, which look rather well on 7", and Kindle Fire is an example of that.
So I don't know what you have to do, pay each developer, hold a $100 million contest for Android tablet apps, reject their apps if they don't also make a tablet version within 6 months - whatever. Just do it and be very aggressive about it, because you've lost a lot of time with the Honeycomb launch failure, and now you only have little time before Amazon's ecosystem or Microsoft's ecosystem become bigger than Android on tablets, too. And that's without even mentioning the enormous and growing iPad ecosystem. That's why you need to start being pro-active about tablets apps like yesterday.