Despite its losses in the tablet market, Google is hoping to revive morale with its Android 12L operating system optimized for larger-screen devices. The latest news is that Rich Miner, one of the co-founders of the platform, has returned to the team with the title of “Chief Technology Officer” (CTO). During a recent #TheAndroidShow developer live event, he made no secret of his optimism about Android tablets.
Looking back at 2011, when Android tablets were launched, the early market was booming with the help of applications such as media players. Unfortunately, subsequent growth has stalled a bit. The good news is that in late 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was data showing that Android tablets were slowly picking up.
Third-party manufacturers offer more software and peripherals like keyboards, making it a friendlier tool without too much focus on the consumer experience. At the same time, Rich Miner believes that the performance and functionality of Android tablets are already very powerful, and they are more cost-effective than laptops.
Because of this, Google came up with the idea of creating Android 12L, optimizing the system and application UI design for large-screen mobile devices. Rich Miner is currently actively promoting developers’ apps, and is considering leveraging tools built by Google to improve tablet support, or even to create “tablet experience-first” software.
In addition, he cited 2020 sales data as saying that the purchase of tablet computers has begun to approach the shipment of notebook computers. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we’ll usher in a crossover—the number of tablets sold each year will surpass the number of laptops sold in the same period. Once past this point, the situation may not be reversed again.