Chip makers seem to be weighing in on the Wi-Fi vs 3G enabled discussion when it comes to tablets, with some starting to question whether consumers actually want another cellular-connected device to add to their monthly bills.
Freescale Semiconductor’s tablet marketing lead Robert Thompson led the charge earlier this week by asking readers of his blog whether Wi-Fi was actually “good enough” for tablets, following up with “how many 3/4G devices do I really need?”
Thompson posits that adding 3G or 4G connectivity into a tablet may turn out to be just as useless and cost ineffective as adding it to notebooks or netbooks was a few years back. “The result unfortunately did not (and still has not) reached the expectations,” he wrote, noting that “few consumers saw the value in adding more than $100 to the cost of the initial purchase and adding $30+ each month to their already $200+ per month family wireless bill.”
Not only did the data plans for netbooks fail to gain mass popularity, Thompson says the platform was so poor in terms of both performance and battery life that users actually experienced buyer’s remorse once they realized their mini PC was costing over $1000 on a two year contract, more than most full featured notebooks.
“Will tablets reverse this trend? Probably not,” says Thompson, for two main reasons: primary usage and cost.
A recent Google Admob survey has already established that most U.S. based tablet owners mainly use their devices at home, where Wi-Fi is readily available and faster than any cellular network currently on offer.
Then there’s also cost to factor into the equation, with 3G modems typically adding around $30 onto the bill of materials for a tablet. With the benchmark standard tablet, the iPad 2, costing $630 for the 16GB 3G/Wi-Fi version, that’s a hefty price tag, without even mentioning the monthly data charges. Added to the near necessity these days for a laptop and smartphone, and tablets rapidly become an expensive commodity – pricing themselves out of most people’s reach.
The only place Thompson believes connected tablets might stand a chance is in the developing world where PC sales remain low and handheld devices are the main point of access for the internet, though it’s hard to imagine people there being able to afford them at current prices.
Alternatively, says Thompson, “the carriers could change their business model and offer a pooled data plan that can be shared across all the devices a user owns, instead of assigning a data block per device.” Qualcomm’s Steve Mollenkopf agreed with that sentiment when RCR caught up with him this week. But will the carriers catch on before it’s too late?
