Google’s CTO of Android tablets sees pill gross sales passing laptops ‘in the not too distant future’

After seemingly forgetting that Android tablets existed for some time, Google is all of the sudden very invested available in the market. Android 12L is in improvement to assist larger-screened units, and one of many platform’s co-founders, Rich Miner, has rejoined the workforce with the title “CTO of Android tablets.” Now, chatting with builders during an episode of Google’s The Android Show, Miner defined the chance the corporate is seeing (through 9to5Google).

Miner references the introduction of Android tablets in 2011 and the way apps like media gamers scaled to suit them simply with out a lot funding, however then progress “kind of stagnated.” Now, he cites knowledge exhibiting progress took off pre-COVID in late 2019 and has continued to rise, with extra keyboard peripherals and developments in software program and {hardware} by third-party producers to make them higher instruments to create as an alternative of consuming.

The different purpose he cites is that tablets will be “very capable, less expensive than a laptop.” That spurred Google’s work on Android 12L to optimize its system UI to be used on larger units, in addition to the best way it codecs apps to suit on large screens.

Miner is making the pitch for builders to have a look at their apps and take into account making the most of the instruments Google’s constructing to enhance pill assist and even constructing apps that method the market as a tablet-first expertise. He factors to 2020 gross sales knowledge, the place “tablet purchases actually started to approach the number of laptop shipments… I actually think there’s going to be a crossover point at some point in the not too distant future where there are more tablets sold annually than there are laptops. I think once you cross over that point, you’re not going to be coming back.”

We’ll have to see extra motion earlier than we are able to consider Google’s renewed pill push will keep away from the entice of stagnation, with elevated assist for builders and new apps that make us wish to choose up tablets once more. Come by on that entrance, and we’ll be prepared if an even bigger (and presumably foldable?) Pixel is within the works.