Google has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the «tablets» heading from its Android page. Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chromebook side of thing\u2026<\/b>
\nGoogle has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the \u201ctablets\u201d heading from its Android page. Perhaps it hoped no one would notice on a Friday and by Monday it would be old news, but Android Police caught them in the act. It was there yesterday, but it\u2019s gone today.
We (well, Romain) called tablets dead in 2016, which was probably a little premature, since over 160 million of them shipped last year \u2014 but even so, it\u2019s not much of a life they\u2019re living.
Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chrome OS side of things, where it has inherited the questionable (but lucrative) legacy of netbooks. They\u2019ve also been working on broadening Android compatibility with that OS. So it shouldn\u2019t come as much surprise that the company is bowing out.
Sales have dropped considerably, since few people see any reason to upgrade a device that was originally sold for its simplicity and ease of use, not its specs. I, for one, have been using the third-gen (1st Retina) iPad since its release approximately 500 years ago and have never felt any compulsion whatsoever to get a new one.
Cheap Kindle tablets from Amazon have proliferated somewhat, presumably as distractions for kids who would otherwise get fingerprints all over mom\u2019s new phone, or for ultra-compact time-wasting on airplanes.
Google\u2019s exit doesn\u2019t mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They\u2019ll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn\u2019t selling them, it probably isn\u2019t prioritizing them as far as features and support.
Fortunately tablets aren\u2019t subject to quite the same feature mania as smartphones, so it won\u2019t really matter if your new Galaxy Tab or what have you doesn\u2019t do all the cool new Google Assistant things. It plays a few games, stores your Pocket articles and lets you watch Netflix in coach. Something cheap along those lines will always be available, but Google\u2019s done with that whole scene.
I\u2019ve reached out to Google for comment and will update if I hear back.<\/p>\n

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