Broback's Blog

What’s NOT trending? Non-Apple tablets. A little time spent with Google Insights for Search indicates that the collapse of the HP Touchpad platform may be a bellwether of things to come from other major consumer electronics vendors.

After hearing that HP threw in the towel and has departed the tablet space, I fired up my browser and took a look at searcher interest in all the iPad wannabes.

The bottom line? In terms of search volume, it turns out the HP Touchpad was pretty darn popular. Only the Playbook and the Xoom were searched more often, and not significantly so. The Nook Color and the Dell Streak weren’t even half as popular as the Touchpad.

Search volume for the past 30 days:

Looking at searches for most of the other tablets on the market, the Touchpad dominates. The Asus Slate didn’t get one tenth the interest that the Touchpad did.

Putting it all into perspective, let’s see how the Touchpad did against the iPad. In a word, ouch. Imagine what the Asus people are thinking tonight.

Now one might argue that many of these tablets are based on the Android platform, so perhaps considering Android in the aggregate might prove to be more promising. Are people searching for Android tablets? Not really:

Based on this information, I’d say John Paczkowski off All Things D is on the right track, and that Consumers Don’t Want Tablets, They Want iPads.