Bug Causes Tablet Section’s Removal from Official Android Site, Google Claims

Last week, visitors who went to check out the tablet section on the official Android website saw that it was nowhere to be found. This led to speculations that Google might have given up on devices with the bigger screens in an effort to concentrate its resources on smartphones instead. It would seem that this was not the case, with the company claiming that a bug had caused the issue.

As explained by Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Platforms and Ecosystems at Google, the disappearance of the tablet section on the Android site was not intentional. It has since been returned, although, as Android Headlines points out, there really wasn’t much of a reason to do so.

Google is not exactly known for showing an aggressive push in the tablet space, preferring instead to carve out a section in the smartphone arena with its Pixel handsets. The only devices that are even featured in the tablet section of the Android site are the NVIDIA Shield Tablet K1, Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0, and the Sony Xperia Z4.

With regards to the iterations of the Android software that have been released so far, very few of them can be considered tablet-specific. It would seem that Google is focusing its wide-screen efforts via the Chrome OS platform.

The overall Android tablet market has been quite underwhelming, in fact, with very few companies actually doing anything innovative in the sector. The only Android tablet product worthy of note to have come out recently is the MediaPad M5 by Huawei, which released back in February, SlashGear reports.

This goes a long way towards explaining how Google’s engineers might have overlooked the category while updating the website. With nothing exciting going on with the section, the tablet category on the Android site might as well not exist.