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BlackBerry CEO: Tablet Market Is Dying
Nerval's Lobster writes "BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins believes that tablets will be dead by 2018. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,' he told an interviewer at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. 'Maybe a big screen in your workplace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.' That may come as a surprise to Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, all of which have built significant tablet businesses over the past few years. Research firm Strategy Analytics suggested in a research note earlier this month that the global tablet market hit 40.6 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2013, a significant rise from the 18.7 million shipped in the same quarter last year. So why would Heins offer such a pessimistic prediction when everyone else — from the research firms to the tablet-makers themselves — seems so full-speed-ahead? It's easy to forget sometimes that BlackBerry has its own tablet in the mix: the PlayBook, which was released to quite a bit of fanfare in early 2011 but failed to earn iPad-caliber sales. Despite that usefulness to developers, however, the PlayBook has become a weak contender in the actual tablet market. If Heins is predicting that market's eventual demise, it could be a coded signal that he intends to pull BlackBerry out of the tablet game, focusing instead on smartphones. It wouldn't be the first radical move the company's made in the past year."
I agree completely. Tablets are a fad. The form factor is terrible and the functionality is lacking. I think that most people are going to continue using phones and laptops.
I don't respond to AC's.
World to Blackberry: In five years there'll be no reason to own a Blackberry.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I might be able to take their word seriously if they didn't paint the blackberry playbook in a positive light at all. After running one of the worst launches in history, no wonder that thing fell flat on it's face. My favorite review said something along the lines of "It's like paying $200 to see Bruce Springsteen and having to settle for a homeless guy in the subway air guitaring it"
BlackBerry seems incapable of judging where there market is going. That's why they were blindsided when the iPhone came out. They still had a chance to adapt, but they pretty much pretended like the iPhone didn't exist. Even after Android came out they had their heads in the sand. By the time they finally woke up, it was too late.
From the company bleeding money for the last three years because it has absolutely no idea what customers want, comes the grand declaration "Customers won't want tablets."
Maybe if Blackberry had released a tablet that had full access to the Android market, they might have sold some. My daughter got a playbook from her boyfriend's parents a few months ago, and while the hardware is nothing to sneeze at, the fact that you couldn't even install the Netflix app was a revelation to me as to just how clueless RIM/Blackberry really is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Screen Real Estate.
There is some stuff you Just. Cant Do. On a phone. The screen is too small.
IF his idea that phones will be a little bigger, do we really want to look like an idiot walking around with a giant brick to our head? Or have to wory about always using a bluetooth earpiece? And where will you stick that larger than you prefer phone?
IMHO an iPhone 5 is starting to get a little too big. The larger samsungs are even worse.
Guy who was late to the party says the party was boring anyway.
The major issue is that tablets are great content consumption devices for watching video or reading but piss poor content creation devices.
The real issue is that anyone still thinks that.
People who actually own tablets know they can be great for creation also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've had several smart phones but recently picked up my first tablet. I do most of my smart phone stuff on the tablet now. I'm now looking at the end of my current cell contract and realizing I'd be better off going to a basic cell.
I have an Asus Transformer TF700T tablet with a detachable keyboard. I can VNC remote desktop. I can access SMB shares. I can game, surf, and do stuff I never would do on a phone (or Blackberry).
The thing in my house that's collecting dust? My old dell laptop. If I need to do real work I'm on my desktop. It's been months since I opened the screen on my laptop. I'm going to wipe it and give it to the kids. There's your dying form factor.
Did he hire Cmdr Taco to perform his market research?
As someone who works in educational technology, I can say with confidence that tablets are going to be sticking around for well beyond 2018. Take a look at all the schools that have or are starting 1:1 programs, and you'll see that more than half of those programs are using iPads or some other tablet. Look at the OLPC tablets and what's been happening with them. Certainly there's a certain group of people who might not "get" tablets because they're not "traditional" computers, but that does nothing to discount how intuitive they can be, especially to children and the elderly. No, you're not going to be doing extensive command-line work from a tablet, but nobody is suggesting that tablets will entirely overthrow traditional computers. Tablets are an educator's dream. You don't have to teach a child to use a mouse--they just touch what they want. Hell, you hardly have to teach any of the basic functions of a tablet to a child at all; they can figure just about everything out themselves.
Of course the tablet market isn't dying. It could possibly be described as a bubble at the moment, but that doesn't mean that that sales are going to disappear within the next five years.
The issue is more that tablets are essentially as powerful as they'll need to be for the next five years, if not longer. They're designed to be highly portable devices that can access the internet and be used as ebook readers, but are large enough to be easier to read from than a smartphone. Aside from the people who need to have the new shiny, most people who own or are thinking of buying a tablet will only upgrade when it can no longer handle their needs, much like Windows XP computers.
I think tablets are fine for the niche they fill. They make great little consumption devices that are somewhat inexpensive, and handle web content just fine. I have a few sitting around at home that we can just pick up and check email with, or my kid can go watch netflix on the bed, or whatever. They certainly aren't going to be replaces computers for anyone but the most casual of consumers, but they do fill a technology gap very nicely.
One thing that he hints at, which I agree with, is that tablets aren't going to change too much in the next five years. Overall sales will level off once everyone has one, and I do suspect the wifi-only versions will be the primary sellers after that. Prices will probably settle in the 100-200 dollar range, at most, with plenty of $50 options. They'll basically take the same route that MP3 players took 10 years ago.
They were in star trek. They'll be around. Everyone likes phones for communication. Tablets will replace books eventually. Tablets will replace phones even.
Think about a tablet with a flexible screen. One that you can roll up. Now think about a cell phone type stick device that you can put to your ear. Now think about pulling out a display for when you need to use it's screen. And then when you're done just let it roll back into the device.
Welcome to the next tablet device.
Blackberry is completely short sighted.
I have a couple of cheap tablets with the Allwinner A10 SOC. One is running Ice Cream Sandwich, and one is running Jelly Bean. The Ice Cream Sandwich one could be running Jelly Bean, if it were worth the bother. So, they are reasonably up to date. Use? One is used mostly as a glorified remote control for MPD[1]. But it also lets me know when I have emails (I go to a real computer to deal with the emails) and is used as a clock. The other is used as a clock, and both a MPD remote control and streamer. Very useful they are. I can only afford to use them like this because they are reasonably inexpensive. (I even have an old Nokia N800 in the shed (garage) which I use as a MPD remote control and streamer.)
They are fine when used in this way, and I think that the touch interface helps to make them ideal MPD remote controls.
[1] I used to use it for steaming as well, but now have a Raspberry PI with pulseaudio in place of it, so I can have the music in that room in sync with the music in other rooms.
Best wishes,
Bob
They didn't want to alienate the people who loved their devices because they had full physical keyboards. They tried a full touchscreen device with the Storm and Storm II, but it failed miserably. The touch screens were horrible, buggy, and their attempts to provide tactile feedback were not very well done (you had to not only touch a key, but also apply pressure, which made it awkward). The Torch was a nice device, with a decent touchscreen and a full slide out keyboard, but it was, as you note, way late to the party.
I think he's right. Have you noticed that phones are getting bigger and tablets are getting smaller? I think phones are about to eat tablets in the same way they ate other stand along devices. People don't want two devices. They want one.
Personally, I hate the idea.
The difference between netbooks/chromebooks & a tablet? One has a keyboard attached... one uses a bluetooth keyboard.
That and 10" netbooks tended to be cheaper than a 10" tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a case to keep them together. And netbooks shipped with an operating system that supports tiled or overlapping windows, unlike tablets whose operating systems inherit the all maximized all the time window management policy from the smartphones that they were originally designed for. And when you do need a more precise pointing device, there's more of a culture of using an external mouse with a netbook than with a tablet.
...if something like an upgraded/improved Google Glass takes off in time.
It's hard to beat the subjective screen size of a thing that draws on your eye.
If it's got eye tracking and is combined either with peering with other devices that have tolerable input mechanisms (phone? keyboard?) or with something Kinect-like, then sure, physical tablets may become less common.
I doubt that's what they mean, though.
What's the difference between Blackberry and Apple? Well, a Blackberry is a small, bitter fruit.
... when reading dies. Or, alternatively, when everyone has bionic, microscopic vision to make out the fine print on small screens.
The tablet market is not dying, but I think the device is still looking for a purpose beyond casual consumption of content. I'm desperate to switch from a laptop to a tablet, especially in the field, but the apps for content creation just aren't there yet. Android and iPad devices have the touch paradigm down very well, but the apps oriented towards content creation still aren't much beyond "let's take a picture of Fred and then draw a moustache on him. Hee hee."
Remember those futurist commercials a few years ago where someone is doing serious design work with just gestures on a surface? That's what's (still) missing.
For content consumers, tablets are sexy and convenient. For content creators, tablets are still unrealized potential. And I can see where people, frustrated by what they *could* do but still don't, could start to be seeing them as a passing fad.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.