Nice! That looks quite interesting. Is there any particular reason why the iPad was targeted first? I wonder if Android would have been a better choice because some manufacturers offer rugged tablets these days which seem like a better fit for this industry.
iPad is the dominant tablet platform (phones might have been different). We may do Android eventually - our backend is written to support web and iOS already.
It is the leader in sales but I'm not sure that will matter in this case. This is domain specific so the choice of tablet is determined by the availability of the software. Just my thoughts, great idea though :)
Thanks as well! We're waiting for a customer to actually request an android tablet version. We're probably going to port our software in a "lite" version to android focusing on the phone first then the tablet. Thankfully android tablets work well with android phone apps (especially with ICS).
By the time we get around to this, we have our fingers crossed that google's acquisition of Motorola begets a sweet android tablet from google directly.
Sounds like you guys have it sorted out. I bring up Android mostly because we found lots of customers asking for specialized hardware (for military, police and fire department contracts). They were really picky about that because the guys using it were not very gentle.
It is a different domain so the requirements are not exactly the same.
For an initial launch it makes sense to go with the far and away leader in the industry. There are ruggedized cases available, so durability shouldn't be an issue. A lot of their potential customers already have iPads, which is another boost.
The otterbox had a stand that people liked (even though it made a clunky cover) and the gumdrop one was great for full coverage (and much better made than the griffin competitors).
Comments
Nice! That looks quite interesting. Is there any particular reason why the iPad was targeted first? I wonder if Android would have been a better choice because some manufacturers offer rugged tablets these days which seem like a better fit for this industry.
iPad is the dominant tablet platform (phones might have been different). We may do Android eventually - our backend is written to support web and iOS already.
It is the leader in sales but I'm not sure that will matter in this case. This is domain specific so the choice of tablet is determined by the availability of the software. Just my thoughts, great idea though :)
Thanks - among our first 20+ companies, all our users have iPads. We haven't seen any Android tablets in the field, actually.
Thanks as well! We're waiting for a customer to actually request an android tablet version. We're probably going to port our software in a "lite" version to android focusing on the phone first then the tablet. Thankfully android tablets work well with android phone apps (especially with ICS).
By the time we get around to this, we have our fingers crossed that google's acquisition of Motorola begets a sweet android tablet from google directly.
Sounds like you guys have it sorted out. I bring up Android mostly because we found lots of customers asking for specialized hardware (for military, police and fire department contracts). They were really picky about that because the guys using it were not very gentle. It is a different domain so the requirements are not exactly the same.
For an initial launch it makes sense to go with the far and away leader in the industry. There are ruggedized cases available, so durability shouldn't be an issue. A lot of their potential customers already have iPads, which is another boost.
Totally. We planned on having a case review section on our website but never got around to it.
The obvious choice of otter box came in first: http://www.amazon.com/OtterBox-APL2-IPAD1-20-C4ATT-Defender-...
Second best ipad case was the gumdrop: http://www.amazon.com/Gumdrop-Cases-Drop-Red-Black-DS-IPAD2-...
The otterbox had a stand that people liked (even though it made a clunky cover) and the gumdrop one was great for full coverage (and much better made than the griffin competitors).
Our users weren't as big of a fan but speck: http://www.amazon.com/Speck-Products-HandyShell-Case-SPK-A02...
made our personal favorite. Not as much protection but the stand / carabineer functionality is great!