Sony released its Android Honeycomb tablet for the UK market sometime in early September and while we know that Android tablets after all the hype have failed to gain much market traction across the globe, we were stunned when a trusted source helped us with some figures. In close to two months the Sony S tablet has sold just 500 units in UK!
At the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong, Andy Rubin of Google had confirmed that Android tablets have sold 6 million units so far (roughly 3.4 million are on Honeycomb), that might not be much when compared to iPads, but it is a big enough number. It is sad to see that Sony couldn’t make the most of the tablet rush. Every major smartphone and PC maker is rushing a tablet out and some are really innovative, we wonder what failed for Sony.
A friend returning from UK also reported that the Sony S tablet was not seen in stores, despite having a shelf for itself. One of our friends who visited the Sony store in UK reported that the staff had no clue about product specifications and the product display had no information around it either. This tells us that the slow response for Sony S tablet looks more like a case of poor launch and not a demand issue to us. Sony has recently taken charge of its smartphone JV and as it consolidates all operations under its own control, we really hope they are able to rollout better smartphone and tablets but at the same time promote them better!
