Update Head of Android, Chrome Hiroshi Lockheimer tweeted this afternoon:
Oops we had a bug when we updated the site. It's back up now. Sorry for the confusion! https://t.co/5mI3L3Gzif
— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) June 3, 2018
Not since the Pixel C has Google shown any intense interest in tablets, but now almost three years after it was announced Google has apparently given up any pretense of caring about tablets, removing the category from the Android.com website.
The navigation bar on android.com is now bereft of a Tablet category and as pointed out by Android Police, you can now view information about Android running on Phones, Wear, TV, Auto, and even check out Enterprise options – but not tablets.
Android on tablets has been a hit and miss affair since the early days of Android. Samsung jumped the gun with the original Galaxy Tab which simply ran Android as designed for phones before Google brought out a tablet specific version of Android with Honeycomb…which was terrible.
Google somewhat recovered a little ground in the tablet wars, but developers have never really embraced Android on tablets for their apps.
These days, even at their fireside chat recently at Google I/O, the Android team seemed somewhat loathe to give a clear idea of what was on the cards for Android tablets. You can see this here:
It does seem that the focus has shifted towards Chromebook running Android apps, or more recently Chrome tablets running Android apps – but neither of the manufacturers who have announced Chrome Tabs have any plans to bring those to Australia just yet. So, where does that leave us? Well, at the moment, there are still thousands of tablets out there running Android, but we probably need to hear something official from Google on this one on what their plans are for tablets and Android.
