In September the Guardian confidently predicted that Apple’s domination of the tablet market was set to fall. The reason can be summed up in one word – Samsung.

With 20/20 hindsight we now know this prediction was (ahem) somewhat incorrect. Apple still dominates the tablet sector. Samsung has produced 3 exceptional tablet products this year, none of which has sold in numbers.

A question Samsung might be asking itself is “why?”

There is one well-known reason why Samsung’s tablet sales have fallen short of expectations. Apple has got into the habit of suing anything that moves companies that make products it considers too similar to its own. This has been especially egregious problematic for Samsung in Germany and Australia.

But Apple’s ‘shoot-first’ legal tactics haven’t been an issue for Samsung here in the UK or the United States.

In the US Amazon released the Kindle Fire, a $200 seven inch tablet designed to make it easy to buy from Amazon. It has sold well in the US – no doubt thanks to its low price, ‘better-than-stock-Android’ user experience and easy access to Amazon’s own App store.

So what’s holding Samsung back here in the UK? I may be able to shed some light on that. You see, Samsung makes a tablet that I am was very interested in buying. It’s called the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and in my opinion it’s the only tablet on the market that offers genuine advantages over an iPad…

• It’s 138 grams lighter
• It’s thinner
• It’s smaller
• It has a better screen

I am currently was looking to replace my notebook with a tablet. My laptop is was dragged all over London and used for a variety of purposes…

• Live demonstrations of websites/programming to clients
• Presentations to potential clients
• On-site running repairs via the CMS, FTP and/or SSH
• Training

An iPad can do does all of the above very well indeed. Even better – it has the added advantage of weighing 800 grams less, the battery lasts much longer, and it takes up less room in my bag. When you’re out all day on London’s overcrowded tubes and streets – less of everything is definitely more.

My thinking is that even less must be even more – hence my interest in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

But I have enough experience with Android devices to know that it’s best to try it before buying. I’m not willing to fork over £389 on an Android device until I know I’ll be happy with the result. I needed a chance to play with the device, and I bet I’m not alone in thinking this way. And right there we get to the heart of Samsung’s two biggest problems here in the UK…

• It’s selling the tablet through consumer electronics stores
• None of the stores I visited had the product in stock (most had never even heard of it)

In the UK consumer electronics stores seldom provide demonstrator models that are connected to the Internet. To properly assess whether or not a tablet is going to work for me, I need to give it a test drive while connected.

In the interests of balance I decided to find out whether I could perform such a test on an iPad. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to do this because I know plenty of people that own one and had already determined it could do everything I needed it to.

Never-the-less, I wanted to compare the experience of shopping for a Samsung tablet versus an iPad and visited the Apple Store in Regent Street. Here’s what happened…

• Numerous iPads were on display, available to use, and connected to the Internet
• Pages and Numbers were already installed. I fired them up and marvelled at how much more useful these two apps are with the extra space and functionality available on an iPad versus an iPhone
• I visited the App Store and searched for both FTP and SSH apps. The App Store presented me with tablet-specific versions of these apps (another issue for Android tablets)
• I couldn’t find a mobile version of Firefox so I suppose I’ll have to make do with mobile Safari. I’ll give Opera a test-drive as that is available (I’ve now tried Atomic Web and Opera Mini. Atomic Web is worth keeping on my iPad, Opera Mini is headed for the great big delete bin in the sky)
• Apples employees didn’t bother me during my ‘test’. Several Apple store members hovered momentarily, apparently realised I was happy enough and gracefully hovered away

If you’ve ever visited a consumer electronics store in the UK, you’ll understand why the above experience is so special. Yet Samsung has chosen to sell its Galaxy Tab 8.9 through consumer electronics stores. I can only marvel at the idiocy of this move. Samsung UK apparently doesn’t understand what they have in the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and why it might appeal to business people (lighter, smaller, no-compromise on screen-size/quality).

I tried very hard to get my hands on the Galaxy Tab 8.9. This includes asking Samsung where I might find one, only to be told they didn’t know either (slow face-palm).

No wonder Samsung can’t sell tablets. Frankly, it doesn’t deserve sales. It’s as if Samsung has given up.

I certainly did and bought myself an iPad from Apple’s Covent Garden Store. The purchase experience was second-to-none in terms of a retail experience here in the UK.

ipad, samsung galaxy tab 8.9, tablets