If you’re in the market to buy a tablet, Apple’s iPad is usually the only good option available. For the longest time, Android tablets have been left as an afterthought and not given as much attention, leading to developers not optimizing their apps for the larger screen.
However, it seems things are about to change. Android tablets are finally getting the attention they always lacked, and it’s changing the industry for good.
Why Android Tablet Apps Are Poorly Optimized
If you go back roughly a decade, you’ll notice that Android tablets then were facing the same problem they are facing today: poor optimization of third-party apps. Of course, the poor hardware was to blame too, but since your smart devices are ultimately a portal to your favorite apps, the software plays a much bigger role.
iPads in the 2010s, however, had robust hardware and third-party apps that actually worked as expected. They received the utmost care from developers, making them far superior.
But why is that? Why do apps on iPads work fine, while the same apps barely function on Android tablets? Well, it has to do with the economics of app development.
As an app developer, you work with limited time and resources, so you have an incentive to optimize your app for devices that are standardized and are going to sell well. This is the thinking that explainswhy app developers prefer iPhone over Android.
After all, why would you waste time and money optimizing for a device if no one will buy it? Such was the case with Android tablets for the longest time; there weren’t enough good options, they received terrible OS support, and even stock apps were often not optimized. All this and more contributed toAndroid tablets developing a poor reputation.
Simply put, optimizing for Android tablets has so far been a bad business decision for developers. In comparison, iPads didn’t change much year after year and sold well, making it not only easy but also commercially viable for developers to optimize for them.
Why Android Tablet Apps Are Suddenly Getting Better
But things are changing. In the last few years, we’ve seen the tech industry slowly trend toward bigger form factors, and that’s thanks primarily to the rise of foldable phones.
Ever since the release of Android 12L which was designed specifically for larger screens, there seems to be a resurgence of interest among users in tablets as well.
One of the ways Google is facilitating this shift is by ranking tablet-optimized apps higher on the Play Store. As it explains on itsAndroid Developers Blog:
Apps and games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked higher in search and Apps and Games Home.
This means app developers who don’t optimize for large screens now run the risk of their apps being harder to discover, and those who do will have a competitive advantage.
TheAndroid Developerswebsite also provides ample large-screen app quality guidelines to ensure optimizing for Android tablets and foldables isn’t too big a pain for developers.
And of course, let’s not forget that Google now sells its own tablet and foldable phone—the Pixel Tablet and the Pixel Fold—which means it has even more of an incentive to push the larger screen narrative onto developers for the success of its own products.
Also, the faster the adoption of larger-screen Android devices, the more people join or get further invested in the Android ecosystem and the better it is for Google since it controls the OS.
Google Is Trying to Revive Android Tablets
It’s a bit too soon to say whether Android tablets are finally worth buying, but the progress is certainly visible. If Google can get developers onboard to optimize their apps for Android tablets, their adoption will accelerate. And with large-screen Android devices gaining popularity, this might happen sooner than we expect.
