Android Tablet: Top Android Tablet Apps

Top Android Tablet Apps

Thanks to the introduction of the Apple iPad back in April 2010, the tablet market has gone from being small part of the technology world to a multibillion dollar industry targeted at everyday consumers.

While Apple still has the majority of market share, Android tablets are starting to gain traction with major manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola, Asus, Toshiba and Acer jumping onboard offering devices with screen sizes from 5.3-inch all the way up to 10.1-inch, while Apple has only two iPads both with 9.7-inch displays.

Apple tends to play the marketing game very well, whereas Android tablet manufacturers are competing on device specifications (fastest CPU, best screen technology, longest battery life) to entice users to jump ship from Apple’s ‘‘walled garden’’ ecosystem where all apps must be tried and tested by Apple to ensure they’re up to certain standards.

Google takes more of a hands-off approach when it comes to submitting apps to the Android Market which can be both a good and bad thing. It’s good because apps appear on the Android Market much quicker than with Apple’s App Store. It’s bad because it can sometimes allow fairly shoddy applications to get through.

Google does its best to stop malicious apps from being submitted via its Bouncer service, but that doesn’t stop badly made apps from being downloaded by users who are expecting a much better experience. So the trade-off is that with Android you get a greater choice of hardware with a smaller amount of top-quality apps (for now, at least).

Google hasn’t released any specific statistics on how many tablet-optimised applications there are on Android. However, it’s not close to the 140,000-plus apps ready for use on the iPad though it’s growing fast. The best thing about the competing ecosystems is that most of the well-known applications can be found on both the Android Market and Apple App Store. I’ve compiled a list of 25 great Android tablet-optimised apps from different categories for you to install on your Android tablet if you own one (I used the Asus Transformer Prime), or are thinking of buying one.