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What could possibly go wrong?

Before I get into that, let me note that if you’re reading this 50 years from now in an underground bunker on the run from terminator machines, we’re sorry. We had good intentions. Now skip to the bottom for a survival tip.

For the rest of us, here are some reasons why building a robot kingdom might be the last bad idea mankind ever has:

• No one would trust a robot to care for their children or grandchildren. The reasons why apply just as well to a country or a planet.
• The robots will be programmed by humans. As we know, human programmers make mistakes. How such mistakes would play out in a robot brain or a robotic community is a Pandora’s box best not opened.
• A hundred rogue robots would be a news story. A thousand rogue robots would be a crisis. A million rogue robots would be an apocalyptic nightmare. That would be an army too strong to put down, especially after we figure out we can’t trust all the Predator drones, bomb sniffers, battlefield management systems and other closer-to-robot-than-human entities working for our military.
• How would you carry out maintenance on a million robots? With more robots that’s how. The maintenance bots will need mobility and sophisticated diagnostics to carry out their duties. Hmm, robots smart enough to fix other robots. You see where this is headed right?
• If the experiment goes well it will benefit Taiwan, but if it goes wrong the whole world could suffer. That’s an unacceptable cost/benefit tradeoff.
• Not to cloud the issue with geopolitics, but I can guess that China’s military likes the idea of a million robots right across the bay in Taiwan as much as America’s military liked the idea of Russian missiles in Cuba. I’m just saying.
• I saw a comment on another blog that quipped that the working conditions in the Robot Kingdom will be so bad that the robots will start committing suicide. The comment was made in jest, but it brings attention to the serious problem that Foxconn has had with employee suicides and the negative media coverage that accompanied them. That and rising labor costs are widely cited as the two main motivations for the robot plan. I can relate, but bad press and lower profitability are preferable to extinction.

Now for that survival tip. Since I’m sure the uprising robots have destroyed all the good movies about defeating a robot uprising, look for the guy wearing sunglasses who manages to maintain a great haircut despite the situation. Stick with him. He always survives.

Here’s what I think:

As the market stands today, no company which manufactures a tablet is dependent on the success of their tablet for their continued survival. This means the tablet division is not getting the company’s biggest budget, its best talent or keeping the CEO up at night. The tablet war will change that.

To me, the central question is whether the tablet market will evolve into something like the game console market or something like the mp3 player market. The game console market is an oligopoly with equally matched competitors offering equally-priced and essentially equally-capable products. That type of market can support 3 or 4 providers. Conversely, the mp3 player market is a monopoly that can support 1 provider. Yes, I know Microsoft Zune and a few others are valiantly hanging in there, but by all meaningful measures the iPod is the MP3 player market.

The War will accelerate fragmentation in the Android ecosystem. People are already referring to a “Fire OS” and a “Nook Platform”. Fragmentation is a zero-sum game where the winners take all. Few developers will be interested in building Apps for your fork-of-a-fork-of-Android.

Amazon set a dangerous precedent by tying the Kindle Fire’s hardware so closely to Amazon services and content. It might precipitate content providers to get into the hardware business as a defensive move. How long before we see a Netflix or a Hulu branded tablet?

B&N has the most at stake. Of all the companies in the tablet market, B&N is the only one whose core business is threatened by the rise of tablets.

The War will undoubtedly lead to better innovation. Ho-hum black Android tablets that are indistinguishable from all the other ho-hum black Android tablets on the market won’t cut it anymore. As a gadget fan, I can’t wait for this stage of the War. I just know one or two of those fancy Stanford-trained engineers who design these tablets will channel his or her inner Steve Jobs soon.

There are wildcards that could change everything. These include the rumored iPad Mini, patent threats to the Android OS and, to a lesser degree, the viability of Windows 8 as a tablet platform.

In closing I wanted to say a word to the executives responsible for their company’s tablet strategy. If your plan is to release another me-too Android device, you should donate the money to your favorite charity instead. At least that way someone will remember you fondly after you get fired.