What really makes a tablet is its selection of apps, and this is the big reason the iPad is king. Otherwise, you just have a large piece of glass with a display and the 1GHz+ processors and cameras and everything else. What separates the iPad from the rest isn’t just its intuitive OS, but the fact that you can do so much with that slab of glass and metal because of its app portfolio.
The iTunes App Store is now brimming with over 100,000 apps made just for the iPad. By comparison, Android Honeycomb, the platform found on the Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1, has apps in the figures of the low hundreds, so it still has a very long way to go.
Just think, in just over a year the iOS tablet has managed to rack up an impressive number of tablet-dedicated applications. From movie editors to games and utilities and entertainment apps, you’d be hard-pressed to find something you’d want on the tablet missing from the app store.
CNET puts it into a different and more impressive perspective:
Around this time last year there were 11,000 iPad native apps, up from the 5,000 about a month after the product was out. In March of this year, while introducing the iPad 2, Apple announced that it was up to 65,000 applications. And just a few weeks ago at WWDC the company said it was slightly above 90,000.
It’s pretty impressive growth for a device that has seen equally impressive sales. All the publicity it has gotten certainly helped–how can a product not do well with Oprah’s endorsement? Each quarter, Apple continues to impress investors and the press with its iPad and iOS device sales.
So if you’re considering a new tablet and app selection is important to you, the Apple iPad is really your only option. There is no arguing that.
[Via: CNET]