TechRepublic published an item with a subject line guaranteed to get attention.

Why Android tablets failed: A postmortem

My reaction is: What a minute! Did the Android tablet die without me noticing this? While the officially sanctioned (with Android Market and other Google-ly apps) tablets have gone nowhere so far, the Ice Cream Sandwich based ones have not left the gate yet and may provide some competition for the iPad. But, more importantly, at least two non-Google-ly tablets seem to be doing quite well. The two are the Barnes & Noble Nook Color (and more recently the Nook Tablet) and the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Despite my own distaste for vendor changes to Google’s native user interface, it looks like both Barnes & Noble’s and Amazon’s Android-based (but without the official Google branding) are doing quite well in the ereader/tablet space. Based on this alone, I think it is too early to write a death certificate for Android tablets let alone provide a post-mortem.