It's time to make an unpleasant statement: Tablets are a fad.

I'm sorry, I know this hurts to hear, Android, RIM and HP. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that we're all just not quite ready yet. The consumer isn't ready because there's really no killer app. The producers aren't ready because, aside from Apple, no one has even remotely gotten the UI right. The hardware makers aren't ready because they're all consistently producing devices that are essentially laptop monitors without the rest of the laptop. No one has any idea what to do with these things, beyond reading and checking email on them.

By now, I have spent some time with all the major tablet flavors. I've toyed with Samsung Android tablets of all sizes, I've played with the RIM Playbook, and I've had a lot of time using and watching friends use Meego tablets from Intel. In fact, the only device I haven't spent more than 5 minutes with is, in fact, the iPad. And yet, in that 5 minutes, I was able to see that Apple had figured it out, while the others hadn't.

Let's start with the biggest elephant in the room: there is no killer app for tablets. Yes, they are a great way to read a book or browse a Website, but none of the above devices, save for the iPad, can do any of these things reliably. The Android Honeycomb browser is buggy, and has major interface glitches. The Meego tablet doesn't have enough reading applications to ensure you can view any file type you'd like. And RIM's Playbook is not quite big enough to accommodate most PDF's without the need to scroll around the page. And, does the HP WebOS device even have a PDF reader yet?

For clarity's sake, I'd just like to point out that in Honeycomb, when you're typing in a URL, the auto-complete bar drops down from the URL bar, and in some cases, obscures the on-screen keyboard, making it impossible to finish typing in your URL. Additionally, the Honeycomb tablets have some sort of seizure on certain sites that center pop-up windows for logging in. The Honeycomb version of Chrome is unable to focus on middle-screen pop-ups, as they keep moving back down the page, away from the viewing area. It's an overall shoddy experience.

If you can't get the browsing right, what hope is there for using the device as a way to consume media? I didn't want to make this post into an entirely 'bashing Honeycomb' piece, but at the end of the day, Android tablets are the only worthy contenders for the tablet throne right now. And I think Google is pushing them too early. They're not ready yet.

And yet, even if the Android tablets were ready for use as a prime time reading device, a spurious killer app at best, there's still the lingering question: "What the heck do I do with this thing?" Reading with it is not enough to warrant a $600 purchase. So far, there is only one killer app I can think of for tablets: restaurants. Waitresses can use tablets to take orders, and the kitchen can see them immediately on their monitors. Alternately, ordering a sandwich, item by item through a touch screen, would be another good use. There are already a few wine bars in SF that use iPads in this manner.

Notice they use iPads. Not third-party OEM devices running Meego or Android. Or even WebOS. These crazy cool tablets not running Apple's operating system will be complete failures in the marketplace for the rest of this year. Possibly into next. They're not even ready for OEM use yet!

Addressing another of my complaints, tablets are boring to touch, look at, and use. Not even Apple has innovated, here. I'd like to see tablets branch out into different form factors and see more creativity spent on the look of the device. But instead, we get iPad mimics, or laptop screens, detached. Can we get a tablet with an ergonomic grip so my hand doesn't go to sleep while I read a book on it? How about a tablet with it's own kickstand so you can prop it up? Included stylus slot? Racing stripes? Anything?

Finally, and perhaps most devastatingly, the software on these devices is simply inferior. Android applications constantly crash. I've used one Android reading application that has a settings panel item titled "Button settings." The Android tablet on which I used this application has no buttons. Opening the button settings menu crashes the application. I thought these phone apps were supposed to run flawlessly on the tablets?

Meego doesn't have enough software to be too unstable, but most of my friends who use their Meego tablets regularly claim them to be sluggish and unresponsive. They've all installed Windows on their Meego devices, an OS that's had a tablet version since 2001.

WebOS? Has HP actually tried to foster any sort of application development since it bought Palm? Not really. That means WebOS tablets are starting from absolute 0 on launch day. At this point, having no applications is just as bad as having no tablet at all.

Do we even have to talk about RIM here? They thought they'd sell 2 or 3 million tablets this year. They barely shipped 500,000 so far, after a last minute redesign. I'd wager that, of those 500,000, not even half have actually sold through. I have to say though, it's the prettiest of all the tablets.

Again, we're left with Android as the only viable alternative to iPad. And yet, even Android's much touted marketplace is devoid of useful tablet apps. There is one amazing news application, and the Gmail application is great. But that's it. Right now, an Android tablet is best used as an Amazon Kindle. Even the PDF viewing applications are slow, unresponsive, and crash-prone. It's a terrible experience, overall.

What's the take-away? Put off your tablet buying and development plans. Phones are still king. If you must tablet, Apple's got your back. But then, they're the perfect people to sell tablets: tablets are luxury items for people who must have the latest greatest. They are a complete fad. In a few years, maybe they'll be here for real. But for now, they're fake.

I'm putting my money on the year of the tablet being 2014.