Apple’s iPad reclaims lost market share while Android flops like a fish out of water

We love Android just as much as the next person, but the sobering fact in the tablet market is that Apple’s iPad is in a league of its own. Not necessarily in terms of features and functionality, mind you, but if tallying up the market share numbers, you’ll quickly discover the iPad is “the king of all media tablets,” and its kingdom grows larger by the day.

According to IHS iSuppli, Apple during the second quarter of 2012 shipped 17 million iPad 2 and 3 models, representing a colossal jump of 44.1% from 11.8 million units in the first quarter. That feat translated into a market share gain of 11.5%, boosting Apple’s Q2 global tablet share to 69.6%, up from 58.1% in Q1, which is the highest it’s been in over a year.

“Apple is making all the right moves to rebuild its dominant position in the tablet space,” said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and monitor research for IHS. “The company is pushing visual performance boundaries with the new iPad, while providing value customers with a lower-priced alternative, the iPad 2. With the expected entrance of the 7-inch version of the iPad in September, Apple is sending a clear message that it plans to dominate this market over the long term.”

Google’s Nexus 7 tablet isn’t figured into IHS iSuppli’s market share numbers, but they’re likely to cannibalize Kindle Fire sales more than the iPad.

This is bad news for Android. Granted, these figures don’t include Google’s recently launched Nexus 7 tablet, but they do factor in Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire device, which is likely to suffer the most from Google’s entrance into the field of hardware (courtesy of Asus). For whatever reason, manufacturers simply have not been able to leverage Google’s open source platform to compete with Apple’s iPad in the full-size tablet space, and instead have had to focus on the less expensive 7-inch category. Even Google resigned itself to doing so when it launched the Nexus 7 in July.

If your’e a die-hard Android fan, this is a tough pill to swallow, and unfortunately it’s not as simple as blaming the disparity on Apple’s marketing wizardry and blind loyalty from a rabid fan base that will buy anything with a lowercase ‘i’ in front of it. Those factors may play a role, but they don’t explain how the iPad can so thoroughly dominate a category time and again.

So what gives?

Pinpointing the problem isn’t an easy thing to do, in large part because there’s probably multiple factors at play. One theory is that Android users are cheapskates, but such a blanket analysis isn’t fair to the scores of intelligent Android fans who understand that devices built around their open source platform shouldn’t cost as much as an iPad, not unless it brings something truly unique to the table, which hasn’t been the case. There’s always been an expectation that Android devices should cost less than their iOS counterparts, and manufacturers have been reluctant to meet those expectations in many cases. Only recently have there been compelling 10-inch Android tablets selling for less than $500, such as the Transformer Pad TF300T, a less expensive version of the Prime that streets for around $350 to $375. Sure, there have been exceptions along the way, but not many.

IHS iSuppli believes the recipe to Apple’s success is that it was able to cook up a “well-developed ecosystem of content and applications” before it ever entered the tablet market. If that’s the case, the future looks a little brighter for Android, which now has a robust ecosystem of its own to play in, but what happens if Apple launches an affordable iPad mini and encroaches the 7-inch category, as has been rumored for some time?

Don’t sweat it if you’re an Android fan. The iPad mini will be popular, no doubt, but I don’t see Apple matching Google’s $199 price tag, not when iPod touch devices start out at the same price. Getting back to IHS iSuppli’s point about the ecosystem, Google, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble figured out that hardware is only the key to unlocking content sales, which is where the real money is made. Apple has this figured out as well, but still charges premium prices for its products. If anything, an iPad mini would motivate Google and other Android players to up the ante with more features while still undercutting Apple on price. That’s something to be excited about, and is, after all, what we all wanted to see happen in the 10-inch category.

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LG’s new 440 PPI display is way too much of a good thing

LG has unveiled a new smartphone display that packs a 1920×1080 resolution into a 5-inch screen. The display, which is based on what LG calls Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching (AH-IPS), is expected to ship in the second half of the year and boasts a pixels-per-inch (PPI) density of 440. That’s far above Apple’s 326 PPI for the iPhone 4/4S or the iPad 3′s 297 PPI. Ironically, the new screen is both an impressive technological achievement and quite possibly the last display you’d want attached to your next cellphone.

When Apple launched the iPhone 4, it coined the phrase “Retina display” to describe the phone’s high-resolution screen. The term refers to the fact that it’s impossible for most people to distinguish the individual pixels on an iPhone 4 if the device is held 12 inches (30cm) away. The key word here is “most.” If you have 20/15 or 20/10 eyesight, you may still be able to see individual pixels at the one foot mark.

LG’s new screen is much closer to the maximum resolution of a perfect human eye (~477 PPI). If you’re one of these exceptionally rare individuals, you may adore the company’s new wunderkind. For everyone else, all those perfectly indistinguishable pixels are going to carry a significant price in terms of weight and battery life. Without new manufacturing technology, there’s no way around it.

When Apple built the iPad 3, it had to redesign the housing, significantly boost the battery size, and nearly double the backlights, all because of the device’s monstrous 2048×1536 display. All of this led to a marked increase in weight, case temperature, and created a sizable hot spot (pictured above). LG’s 5-inch panel resolution is only 2/3 of the iPad 3, but it packs those pixels into an extremely small area.

Longer term, there are display technologies that will reduce power consumption — Sharp has IGZO, Samsung has invested in LTPS (low temperature polycrystalline silicon) and LG is working on OLEDs. At 440 PPI, however, LG has already nearly hit the fundamental limits of the human eye. We’re not knocking the technical achievement, but we think customers will ultimately be better served by technologies that reduce power consumption, improve screen visibility when outdoors, and allow for more accurate color reproduction. It’s not even been two years since the iPhone 4 debuted, but the era of PPI as a meaningful product differentiator (above the bottom-end, anyway) may soon be over.

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Windows 8 tablet PC makers: We can’t compete with the iPad’s price

If reports from Taiwan are to be believed, hardware manufacturers are struggling to create Windows 8 on ARM (Windows RT) devices that are competitively priced against Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The reason? According to Digitimes, OEMs have to pay Microsoft $90-100 for a Windows 8 license.

While that $90-100 figure sounds a little bit on the high side (Microsoft historically charges OEMs around $50 for desktop licenses and $30 for Windows Phone 7 licenses), it doesn’t really matter: Even at $10 or $20, Microsoft (and OEMs) would be hard pushed to compete with Amazon and Apple on price. Apple effectively gives iOS away (it’s a hardware company, after all), and Amazon gets Android for free. Microsoft has to charge for Windows 8 and Windows RT because it’s a software company; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t make any money, which shareholders might see as a bit of a problem.

The other important thing to bear in mind is that it’s virtually impossible for OEMs to create a tablet that’s comparable to the iPad, for the same price. Apple’s design, supply chain, and manufacturing dominance is so stellar that the iPad is actually one of the cheapest tablets to produce. Famously, the fat, plastic-body, WiFi-only HP TouchPad cost more to manufacture ($318) than the 3G iPad 2($310). Once you factor in the additional cost of a Windows license, there simply is no way for similarly-outfitted Windows tablets to compete on price. (As an aside, this is the same reason that OEM ultrabooks are struggling to match the MacBook Air’s specs.)

Where does this leave Windows 8/RT tablets, then? Well, for a start, Apple applies a huge markup to its tablets: The original $310-to-produce 16GB 3G iPad 2 sold for $629 (this is why Apple is the second most valuable company in the world). Windows OEMs can always undercut that price, but once they factor in license fees the profit margins will drop precipitously. It will also be interesting to see if Intel can price its SoC Atom parts (Medfield and Clover Trail) to compete with ARM. It is due to the double whammy of Intel and Windows “taxes” that Dell, HP, and other desktop PC makers only have a profit margin of around 5% (while Microsoft and Chipzilla laugh all the way to the bank with margins of 20-30%).

As long as someone is willing to take a hit to their profit margins, then, it should be possible for Windows ARM tablets to compete with the iPad and Kindle Fire. Of course, all of this speculation doesn’t take into account the fact that Windows RT could be more desirable than iOS; users might actually be willing to pay a premium for Windows tablets. For that to happen, we’d need hundreds of thousands of Windows RT apps, though, and so far it doesn’t look like that will happen. We should also remember that Apple could quite easily block the entrance of Windows RT by dropping the price of its iPads, and still remain healthily profitable.

Read about my $200 Windows 8 tablet — which seems more like a dream every day

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Apple sneakily debuts 32nm A5 in new iPad 2, Apple TV

With an illusory flourish that only Apple could pull off — “Focus your attention on this shiny iPad 3!” — the magicians of Cupertino have quietly started shipping iOS devices with 32nm A5 SoCs. So far, the new $399 iPad 2 (iPad 2,4 in Apple nomenclature) and third-generation Apple TV have been confirmed to use the new chip, but it’s also possible that there’s a new generation of the iPhone 4S with a 32nm A5 at the helm.

The original A5 SoC (system-on-a-chip), found in the first iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, was built on Samsung’s 45nm process. The A5X SoC in the iPad 3, which has four GPU cores instead of two, is also 45nm. By moving to Samsung’s 32nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process, the new A5 processor (S5L8942, pictured above) is 40% smaller than its predecessor (pictured below), uses around 30% less power, and is significantly cheaper for Samsung to produce — thus, no doubt, allowing Apple to retain its fat profit margins on the cut-price iPad 2.

As far as we can tell, this is the first mass-produced part to roll off Samsung’s 32nm HKMG process. Samsung has announced four of its own 32nm parts — the Exynos 4212, 4412, 5250, and 5450, with the 4212 was slated to power the Galaxy Nexus — but so far, nothing has emerged (the Galaxy Nexus was powered by TI’s OMAP4). It’s possible that the 32nm process wasn’t ready in time for the Exynos 4212, or it might just be a case of Apple having a huge amount of clout — it must be one of Samsung’s largest customers, after all.

With the low-level stuff out of the way, what does the 32nm A5 actually mean for users? Well, for a start, the new iPad 2 probably has significantly more battery life than the original iPad 2 — either that, or Apple has also combined the new SoC with smaller, cheaper batteries (definitely a possibility, to reach that $399 price point). Performance will be the same. Incidentally, if you recently bought an iPad 2 and it came with iOS 5.1 installed, you have the new 32nm part; if it came with iOS 5.0.1, you’re all out of luck.

More importantly, though, the 32nm A5 is a very strong indicator that the iPhone 5 — which should be released this year — will also have a 32nm SoC. As for whether this will be a 32nm A5X, or something entirely new (a quad-core A6?), we don’t know. It’s also likely that the iPad 3 will undergo a 32nm revision, too, reducing its power consumption and thus the need for the huge (and heavy) batteries that currently encumber it.

New 32nm A5 (APL2498/S5L8942) vs. old 45nm A5 (APL0498/S5L8940)

The shift to 32nm will further cement Apple’s dominance in the smartphone and tablet arena. In terms of power consumption — the most important metric when it comes to mobile — only devices powered by the 28nm Snapdragon S4 have a hope of competing. The 45nm Tegra 3 is growing longer in the tooth every day.

[Image credit: Chipworks]

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What the iPad 3′s Retina display looks like under a microscope

As you probably know by now, the pixels in the new iPad’s Retina display are so small that they almost can’t be seen by the human eye — but as you can see above, the story is very different indeed when you look at it at 80x magnification under a microscope.

What you see above is the LCD displays of the iPad 3 (left) and iPad 2 (right) as photographed byLukas Mathis, a Swiss software engineer and UI designer. He received his iPad 3 this morning, and like any discerning geek the first thing he did was investigate the beautiful 2048×1536 Retina display — first by eye, and then under the microscope. Then he checked out the screen on his iPad 2 and marveled at the much larger (and quite differently shaped) pixels. Not satisfied, he magnified the display of his iPod Touch, iPhone 4S, Kindle Fire, Google Nexus One, PlayStation Vita, and, and, and — well, let’s just say that Mathis has a rather large number of gadgets (a bunch of them are pictured below).

Anyway, despite the very obvious differences in resolution — they’re all photographed at roughly 80x magnification, so the pixel sizes are relative — the layout and shapes of the pixels are very interesting. Take the iPad 2, for example: Not only are the subpixels (red, green, blue) non-rectangular, but the green subpixel is one shape while the red and blue are another. In the case of the PlayStation Vita, the blue subpixels are only half the size of the red and green. On the Google Nexus One you can see the much-maligned PenTile matrix — and in the HP Veer and PlayStation Portable displays (pictured on Mathis’ site), each pixel is scarred with dark lines.

What do all of these differences mean? Well, now we’re moving into the arcane realm of LCD and OLED technology. The dark gaps between the pixels (and within the pixels in some cases) are mostly caused by control circuitry (each and every subpixel has a few microscopic copper wires running to it) and the need to make sure that each pixel group is “square” (draw an imaginary square around each group of three subpixels, and you’ll see what I mean). The weird shapes are most likely about controlling the exact amount of light that each subpixel emits. In the case of the PS Vita, with its skinny blue subpixel, it’s safe to assume that the blue light being emitted is twice as strong as red or green; if it was full-width, the resulting image would be very blue.

It’s more complicated than that, though. It might be that the backlight has a hint of blue, and so the blue subpixel is made smaller to compensate. The anti-glare coating on the display might absorb more red and green, and so those subpixels need to be larger. There is also the fact that different display manufacturers use different techniques; Samsung might prefer rectangles, while Sharp might prefer more organic shapes.

Finally, jumping back to the topic of resolution, you can clearly see the higher PPI of the iPhone 4S display versus the iPad 3 (326 PPI vs. 264). It’s a shame that Mathis doesn’t have access to the Galaxy Nexus, as its 1280×720 PenTile display with 316 PPI is probably quite a sight to behold.

[Image credit: Lukas Mathis]

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Why Google and Android users aren’t paying any attention to the new iPad hype

Like most of you, I have been discussing thenew iPad with my technophile friends, ripping apart the news and taking a look at what the big deal is. During the course of our conversations, the overarching question that we are working to answer is “What will Google do to counter this new device with Android OS?” The largest reason for us looking for answers to that question is the inevitability of our group getting asked for our opinions by friends (and editors).

While there have been times where we have been pretty impressed with the technology that Apple has announced, this was different. While we agreed that the new screen resolution is going to be nice, there really isn’t anything game-changing that would make the tablet device a must-own. This is the same reason why Google and its Android team doesn’t care about this release, and aren’t scrambling to one-up Cupertino with some killer feature for the upcoming Jelly Bean update.

As a user of a number of Android devices, including a Galaxy Tab 10.1, the different features that Tim Cook and his team rattled off were underwhelming. I will totally concede the point that the Retina screen is a large step forward for mobile computing, but at the same time is a bit of a marketing ploy. It’s interesting that Apple made the effort to explain away the fact that the new iPad’s screen can have the Retina classification even though it only has a PPI of 264 compared to the 326 that the iPhone 4 packs into its screen. While the viewing distance math presented on stage is correct, it does still smack of marketing spin. Nevertheless, the resolution is pretty amazing for a portable device. However, nothing else that was announced made me envious in the least because they were largely inconsequential.

Take for example the dual-core A5X. While I won’t say that multi-core computing in mobile devices is a bad thing, it’s a bit humorous to me since the applications available right now don’t take full advantage of the power available. This fact isn’t something that I attribute to just iOS; Android has the same issue. Nvidia was so desperate to make money on the Tegra 2 that it had to create its own application in the Android Market so users could find the apps that were specifically written for the architecture. Don’t get me wrong, hardware advancement is a great thing, but multi-core means nothing to the average consumer except for marketing purposes. If they think there is a device that’s faster and more powerful than what they are currently using, they are going to buy it.

So, sure, the A5X has gotten a spec bump in the fact that it has a quad-core GPU that will give a performance boost, but it’s hardly a leap forward in technology. Neither is the addition of LTE connectivity — while it’s certainly a nice-to-have it’s not a show stopper. For Android users its almost become a standard feature for those on Verizon, despite the fact that it’s a vampire on battery life. Speaking of which, I am curious to see if the new iPad’s battery can last nine hours while on LTE. I am doubtful to say the least.

Wednesday’s announcement left me completely underwhelmed as a technophile and an Android user. Unlike other fans of the little green droid, I don’t want Apple to go anywhere. The relationship right now between Google and Apple is like that of the Red Sox and the Yankees. They hate each other in public, but secretly admire what the other is capable of. This causes intense competition that only benefits us as consumers. I was hoping for an amazing device that would force Google’s hand to actually take a hard look at the issues facing its mobile OS. Instead of a major hardware upgrade, Cupertino presented a hardware sidestep (at best) that is going to split the iPad brand and cause market confusion.

There’s a very specific reason why the company decided not to call it the iPad 3 and to keep the iPad 2 around for awhile. Apple couldn’t in good conscience call this device the next generation of its tablet line. This is to be admired… because it isn’t! If the new iPad had been called the iPad 3, it would have looked a lot like Samsung’s misstep with the Vibrant on T-Mobile. If you will remember, Sammy released the Vibrant on T-Mobile which people flocked to buy, only to release the Vibrant 4G less than a year later with specs that should have been present in the original version. By making the differentiation, Cook and his company avoided a consumer confidence fiasco. Keeping the iPad 2 around at a lower price will serve to keep sales brisk, as Cupertino knows that there isn’t enough reason to jump for the new device if you already own the second generation.

While the consumers will certainly flock to their local Apple retail stores to be among the first to own the new device, there really isn’t much reason to. With no major leaps forward besides an almost-Retina display that will still be playing high-def content on a 4×3 aspect ratio (hope you like those black bars), there is nothing to concern Google and its Android users. Both groups are looking ahead to the Tegra-3 armed tablets coming down the pipe from Asus and Samsung, which we hope will raise the technology bar to a higher level. Hopefully next year’s iPad release (the iPad 4? The newnew iPad?)  will bring something awesome to the table to continue to force innovation, because this new iPad certainly didn’t.

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Verizon gets it: We want data freedom, and don’t want to be gouged for it

Apple’s inclusion of a mobile hotspot on thenew iPad is pretty exciting. Like the iPhone, we can now use the tablet as a hotspot to share the data connection with our other wireless devices. But Verizon’s move is even better: you don’t pay extra for it.

Verizon has confirmed to several sites that its 4G plans will include the option to tether at no additional cost. Verizon’s iPad 4G plans include 1GB of data for $20, 2GB for $30, and 5GB for $50. This is completely different from smartphone plans, where the “right to tether” can set you back as much as $20 per month, in addition to the normal fees.

AT&T hasn’t specified whether it will follow a similar route, although a tweet provides little hope. In fact, it suggests AT&T will not offer tethering at all — a move none of us should finding shocking considering the company’s past history. Remember when tethering was first introduced in 2009? It took the company a full year to support the feature.

At least one carrier seems to be listening. Despite the industry’s protestations, we pay a set amount every month for a set amount of data. There shouldn’t be an additional charge for the right to use the data in another way, as long as we stay within those limits. No matter whether the data’s being used by the device itself or a device tethered to it, I can think of no valid reason why such a right should incur an additional charge. It’s price gouging, plain and simple.

Verizon seems to have figured this out. Its olive branch to those who want to tether devices to the iPad in order to use the data they have already paid for is a solid business move. It separates them from the competition (for now), and hopefully is the beginning of the end of a crappy, consumer-hostile practice.

Will this signal the end of the tethering tax on smartphones, too? I’ve argued previously, regarding AT&T’s data throttling strategies, that you can’t have two sets of rules. In the end, customer pressure won the day and the carrier relented. If we really want to end the surcharge for hotspot use, we’re going to have to apply pressure to the companies in the same manner to get what we want, and frankly what is right.

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The iPad shows again that Apple isn’t afraid to compete on price

Even before the new iPad debuted in San Francisco on Wednesday, rumors were circulating about the iPad 2′s future. Was Apple about to expand its tablet line through a similar strategy as it had already done with the iPhone? Yes it was, and it is a signal that things are a-changin’ in Cupertino.

The iPad 2 takes the role as the budget model, its price cut by $100. The 16GB WiFi version now comes in at $399, with the WiFi+3G model retailing for $529. It is obvious that Apple has no desire to play with the bottom feeders — the Kindle Fires of the world — but sure as heck will make its tablet competitive with those in the same league.

Samsung is playing on price here too, peddling its Galaxy Tab 2 for $350. The screen is just seven inches though, which is arguably too small for some tablet applications. For $50 more you can have an iPad, with a bigger screen and basically the same specifications. Apple just put a good deal of pressure on a rival that has given it fits over the years. Do you blame them?

Apple’s move to keep the iPad 2 around is part of a bigger strategy by the company which allows it to compete in an area — price — which is generally foreign for the company. Its detractors have long been fond of talking about the “Apple Tax,” where the company charges a premium for a product that has similar specifications to its competitors for much less.

Sometime over the past several years things changed. Apple quietly lowered its price points, while at the same time beginning to give up its longstanding tradition of completely refreshing its product lineup once an updated version launches. Like the iPhone 4S/4/3GS arrangement, the iPad 2 is a sufficient tablet for a large majority of consumers, and that’s what it’s about. Expanding the market, staying dominant.

Keeping around “last year’s stuff” also keeps the company true to its own business ideals. It is heresy for the company to release a substandard product without any kind of wow factor. This is why you will never see Apple directly compete with the Kindle Fire: there is no such thing as low-end in Cupertino.

Will Apple eventually compete in the mini-tablet sector? Probably, and rumors suggest that one is in the works, and in some cases they indicate Apple may already be purchasing the parts to build one. But its not going to be as cheap as the Fire or other budget tablets.

Just a guess here, but I think a “iPad Mini” will likely come in at a $299 price point or so. It is going to be similar in functionality to the iPad 2 now, unless Apple figures out a way to construct those Retina displays cheaper (that’s not going to happen for now). Either way, when put aside a Kindle Fire the smaller iPad will blow its competitors away, and people are going to pay that “Apple Tax” for a better product.

Could I be crazy in my thinking here? Possibly. At the same I don’t think its crazy to believe that Apple is serious about maintaining its dominance in the “post-PC” market, and realizes price and value are the biggest factors in keeping them on top, especially with the cheap-and-cheerful harbinger of Windows 8 on the horizon.

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Why the iPad 3 Retina display changes everything

Updated @ 1:30pm: It’s confirmed: The iPad 3 will have a 9.7-inch 2048×1536 264 PPI display. The extra pixels will be pushed by the A5X processor, which will have a quad-core GPU (up from dual-core).

Updated @ 1:40pm: The iPad 3 is the same price as the iPad 2, too, but slightly thicker and probably slightly heavier.

In a few moments, Apple CEO Tim Cook will take to the stage in San Francisco and announce the iPad 3, or iPad 2S, or iPad HD. Little is known about the iPad 2′s successor — we can only speculate about its processor, RAM, and cellular radios — except for the fact that it will have a Retina display. Cook, like Jobs before him, will try to convince us that it changes everything — and you know what? It will.

If we put aside potential issues such as price and weight — yes, there’s almost zero chance of a Retina display iPad being sold at the same price as the iPad 2; Moore’s law just isn’t there yet — and simply look at the benefits and new use cases for a Retina iPad, you will quickly see what I mean. For a start, get your head around this: The iPad HD will have a 9.7-inch 2048×1536 (264 pixels per inch) display. To put this into perspective, the nearest competitors, size-wise, are 15-inch 1920×1080 laptop displays, which have a PPI of just 146. You can find desktop monitors in the 20-inch range that sport resolutions of 2560×1600, but that’s still “only” 150 PPI. In short, the iPad HD will be visually stunning, and for supply reasons — 2048×1536 at 9.7 inches is still right on the edge of what’s feasibly producible with modern processes — no other device of a similar size will be able to match it.

What can you do with that kind of resolution in a tablet, though? How does the Retina iPad actually change everything?

Reading

At its most basic, a higher PPI means smoother, more readable text. Assuming you don’t have a problem with looking at emissive (backlit) screens for long periods, the iPad HD will be a fantastic device for reading books, magazines, and websites.

Multimedia

When it comes to creative work of any kind — be it programming, editing photos, or designing a website — more pixels is better. I think everyone, including Apple, has been surprised by unusual uses of the iPad, from Lang Lang performing an encore of Flight of the Bumble Bee to magic tricks. Just last week, Adobe announced Photoshop Touch for the iPad, and Avid Studio is surprisingly powerful. With a Retina display, the iPad would supercharge all of these applications — and originate a bunch more, I’m sure.

Games

Assuming the iPad HD has the guts — and the rumors do point towards a faster A5X or A6 chip making a debut today — then 2048×1536 will make for a gorgeous gaming platform that will attract gamers and developers alike. With Apple dangling more and more of its limbs in the gaming and home entertainment pool, a high-res iPad would make the perfect peripheral — and a terrifying match-up for Nintendo’s Wii U, which, like Apple’s solution, will also consist of a box connected to the TV and a tablet controller.

Movies

At 1024×768, the iPad 2 struggles to display any content over 480p; at 2048×1536, you’ll be able to watch delicious 1080p video with space to spare! This does rely on Apple securing access to HD content — but it will need that for the Apple iTV, too.

It ain’t all fun and games

A Retina display won’t be without its issues, though. For a start, just like with the iPhone 4, app developers will have to create all-new assets — and creating icons and textures that look good at 264 PPI won’t be cheap or easy. Then there are the aforementioned technical issues: Unless Apple has somehow reinvented backlight, LCD, or lithium-ion battery tech, there’s no way the iPad HD will be comparable to the iPad 2 in terms of weight, cost, or longevity.

Updated @ 1:50pm: It seems I have to eat my hat. Apple has just released an iPad 3 with a Retina display at the same price point as the iPad 2. It is slightly fatter, however.

Now read our post about how Apple managed to squeeze all of that new tech into the iPad 3

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Which smartphone or tablet display does best in bright light?

Tired of squinting at your smartphone or tablet display on a bright sunny day? We may have the answer for you, then. DisplayMate Technologies president Dr. Raymond Soneira took a look at four tablets and four smartphones, gauging their performance in a wide range of lighting conditions from absolute darkness to indirect outdoor sunlight.

Apple and Samsung’s displays took top honors, with the iPhone 4, iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy S, and Tab 10.1 taking top honors. Doing much worse was Amazon’s Kindle Fire, while the HTC Desire, Motorola Xoom and Droid X also fared poorly. Overall, it appears by a slight margin Samsung’s displays are the best, while Dr. Soneira found the HTC Desire as the worst performer.

Soneira’s tests find that HTC has a lot of work to do on its displays. At a level of 20,000 lux, which is equivalent to full indirect outdoor sunlight, the display is unusable. Tablet-wise, the worst performer was the Kindle Fire, which shows similar readability problems at 20,000 lux and above.

“Other than jacking up the screen Brightness, manufacturers have done very little to improve screen readability and picture quality under high ambient lighting,” Dr. Soneira says. His company sells the software which he uses to judge the displays, which it says will also correct the problem. In other words? This guy has a vested financial interest in the results. Regardless, it’s a good look into what electronics manufacturers still need to do to improve displays.

We’ve heard a ton about Gorilla Glass, but in the end Corning was more focused on making thin, unbreakable glass than working on light reflectivity issues, where a lot of readability issues when it comes to ambient light come from. So that’s not the answer either.

Apple’s made a lot of hay over its Retina display and its advantages. While it has done wonders for the readability and clarity of these displays, it’s done jack for their readability in bright light — and DisplayMate has already said the display isn’t that great. Since we’re becoming ever more dependent on these devices, this is a problem that begs for a fix. “While Apple and Samsung are currently the best performers in high ambient light, it is possible to do substantially better with advanced scientific lab tests and analysis”, Soneira says.

I doubt for one second that Apple will reach outside of its bubble in Cupertino for help, but you have to think they would be interested in Soneira’s findings. Other companies like HTC and Amazon look like they could benefit greatly from this work — putting it bluntly their displays are pretty crappy. Then again, they do say you get what you pay for, right?

Read more at DisplayMate: Smartphone display results & Tablet display results

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