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Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes
Nerval's Lobster writes Is the tablet market rapidly collapsing? Mobile-analytics firm Flurry doesn't come to quite that stark a conclusion, but things aren't looking too good for touch-screens that don't qualify as "phablets." According to Flurry's numbers, full-sized tablets accounted for only 11 percent of new devices in 2014, a decline from 2013, when that form-factor totaled 17 percent of the new-device market; small tablets experienced a smaller decline, falling from 12 percent to 11 percent of new devices between 2013 and 2014. (Meanwhile, phablets expanded from 4 percent of new devices in 2013 to 13 percent this year.) Boy Genius Report, for its part, looked at those numbers and decided that the tablet market is doomed: "Consumers happy with compact smartphones are not switching to larger iPhones for now, but former tablet buyers are." That's not to say people will stop using tablets, but the onetime theory that they would one day cannibalize all PCs looks increasingly nebulous.
Oh, you mean my personal Netflix gadget.
I use it (google nexus 7) because the battery lasts a long time, it is portable, and it is specifically NOT my phone.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
So will the UI makers retreat on their strategy of forcing PCs to use touch-inspired interfaces? We can only hope.
I'm not replacing my tablet every 2 - 3 years. When it comes to my phone ? Probably every 2 yearsish I'll replace it.
UPS Sucks
I have a tablet and use it all the time, but have no plans to buy a new one. I suppose if there are enough people like me, the tablet market is doomed.
Lesson learned: don't build a good product that is going to work well for a long time.
Couldn't it also be that Tablets are a question of reaching market saturation, and that they fall more into the PC life cycle rather than the Cell Phone life cycle of being replaced yearly? From my personal experience, everywhere I go, I see people with tablets that are a year or two old because they are "good enough", lack compelling reasons to upgrade and also are typically appear significantly more expensive than their cell phone counterparts as they are typically sold unsubsidized.
Thirty four characters live here.
Seriously, if my phone isn't capable of doing whatever task I need to do, it means I probably need my full-on laptop anyway. Add in the fact that a tablet either requires wifi or requires cell service but can't make calls and it becomes obvious why the market is behaving this way.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
I have an iPad 2. When I bought it back in 2011, tablets were still something "new" (at least in my country), and a lot of people were buying them. Well, I'm still using that iPad2, and didn't have to buy a new one since then. I guess I'm not the only one, so it's to be expected that, now that the "boom" is over, the sales are going to settle down.
I will probably buy a new one once the iPad stops working for me, and then probably wait another 3 or 4 years.
The cost of a large smartphone is hidden by the contract.
With a tablet you pay full price up front.
Most of the time I am using my phone for reading, or for playing music. The Galaxy Note3 works well for that, and its more portable than my Kindle fire HDX 8.9
"That's not to say people will stop using tablets, but the onetime theory that they would one day cannibalize all PCs looks increasingly nebulous."
how do you look only at data concerning tablets and phones and come to a conclusion about PC's? What did laptop and PC sales look lik compared to mobile devices? My wife uses a 2 year old tablet as her primary computing device at home... She didn't want a replacement for her laptop when it failed because she can do everything she needs on her tablet.
Microsoft got that one right. Surface devices are far more than the Android/iPad tablet toys to kill time or hand to the kids. Tablets are devices looking for a use case: I don't see myself putting my phone aside to use a phone with a bigger screen, and that's exactly what you do when you drop the iPhone to use an iPad. In fact it makes a lot more sense to have phone/tablet combinations with different platforms (Android/iPad, or iPhone/Android Tablet).
In any case, tablets as big phones are the ones that are having a rough time. But Surface-like devices, with Intel CPUs and a full blown desktop OS, those are the ones that will remain because they fill a real use case. This one for example ... not even $100 for a quadcore intel 'laptop' (that kind of tablet is the real chromebook killer ... maybe not laptop killer, but it would cover at least 50% of laptops use cases):
http://www.brandsmartusa.com/T...
The hardware is still kind of junk (mostly the display), but eventually it will catch up. How can you compete with those specs and prices, and we are talking about a full blown desktop OS.
In my opinion what makes the Surface so unattractive to most users is that it uses Windows. An iPad like device with OSX would be a real killer. Let's hope Microsoft at least gets Windows 10 right, because it doesn't seem Apple wants to enter that market.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
So, since tablets have not, and probably won't eliminate laptops, desktops, and phones, the market is in collapse? Meh!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Wired Magazine keeps saying so!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
but they are not made for data creation...doing graphics or coding on a tablet is a pain without getting a wireless keyboard/mouse... perhaps now we can get back to regular desktops...
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
These marketing types are all chicken little's. Any engineer/technician could have told you this was going to happen. Tablets are not the new laptops. They are consumption devices used for a specific purpose. Everyone who wanted a tablet, now has one, so expect sales to slow. Expect content creators to keep buying laptops and desktops. And expect anyone with half a brain to keep rejecting touch unified interfaces, the "cloud", and software as a service.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
A Dice.com link from Nerval's Lobster.... THAT's never happened! Any time now we should see a post from Bennet H...
"Show me the numbers!"
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Smart Phone - Mobile Communications Central + quick access to any information needed and ability to do common tasks remotely (not sure why anyone really needs to upgrade this more than every 2-3 years)
Amazon Tablet - General Video Consumption Device (we only turn on the TV when viewing family movies these days) that can also be used for decent video conferencing, Also great for some specific android apps that are designed for larger tablet screens, can substitute for laptop for most purposes, especially when traveling light. (can probably go 4-5 years between upgrades)
Phablet - Those who somehow need to take the worst aspects of both smart phones and tablets and combine into one, but definitately a reasonable choice for when one gets older and using small smartphone screens is no longer appropriate.
Computer + Large Monitor - For doing everything else, especially for extended duration. Build it well and it can go 4-10 years between major upgrades.
Laptop - When you are willing to pay double for less performance, substantial reductions in upgradeability, and a smaller screen in exchange for using less space and being able to move a computer easily.
I was carrying my iPad Mini around with me to meetings and such - in addition to carrying my little phone. The Mini is about the perfect size gadget... but I was carrying two devices everywhere, one of which won't fit in many pockets. So... I decided to try using an iPhone 6+ as my one carry-around. It's definitely a compromise for some uses, but it's definitely good enough to replace the iPad for note taking in meetings, ssh'ing into a server in a pinch, or looking up info on the web when I'm away from my desk. I expect, going forward, I'll only have two devices - a biggish phone plus a light 12"-13" laptop (e.g. MacBook Air).
#DeleteChrome
Tablets are not at all like PC's which is why people like them and why they do not get replaced all that often. Tablets are really used to consume media, light reading, movies, video, some web browsing, and maybe some simple games. The interface has it's good uses and they are things people frequently used PC's for but there are many things a tablet just cannot do well. I am still chugging along on ipad version 1 which was not the greatest tablet, is under powered and doesn't work all that well. The truth is for the amount of time I use it and for what I use it for it still works, I can do my light reading and watch a movie on the plane while I travel or listen to music..everything it did when new it still does and until it breaks or the internet experience gets even more dreadful I see no reason to replace it. Most consumers are the same way they are keeping these things for a long time and it takes 4 generations of product to come out before they replace it. Unlike PC's which are spec driven purchases, most people who own the ipad or android tablets have no idea what they are running with only the storage capacity. It has been a victim of it's own success and marketing strategy.
Everything you just said. In addition Tablets are a niche product. Unlike personal computers, or phones, they are a "nice to have", but not really all that necessary. All that hyperbole about them replacing PC's are exactly that. They are not powerful enough, flexible enough, nor practical enough to do so.
In addition, to all that, likely more recently the big thing killing the Tablet market is the size creep of phones. With the new iPhone 6 Plus Gigantor, the previous version of Galaxy McHuge, or even the Galaxy MegaNote the distinction between what is a "Tablet" and what is a "Phone" is a bit more blurry. What was normally an iPad Mini is really like an 6 Plus, minus phone capability, that isn't subsidized... Sooo why am I buying it again? Also many like myself probably realized, do I really need a full sized Tablet when I have a 5.5" smartphone?
So no, I am not surprised that the market is a bit saturated, and really neither should the makers of these devices, as they are the makers of their own downfall (i.e. they make all the devices that are competing with and defeating their own Tablet sales).
To use the age old Slashdottian car analogy, it was thought that within the Nissan car portfolio, that because the Sentra and the Altima were so similar, and were only sized slightly different, that the Sentra ate into the Altima sales because of it. There was not enough differentiation between brands to justify the price purchase. Now consider that in this analogy to be totally accurate, it would be Nissan complaining about why you are not buying a Sentra AND an Altima... (While also having a Maxima at home for long trips). :)
In a drive to be clickbait some company has decided to lie or at least massage the truth with abstract numbers. Market share has never ever and never will be a truly useful metric for the health of some market.
Say i define a market as "portable computing devices without physical keyboards". The would cover smart phones and slate tablets. In year 1 there's a million smart phones sold and a million tablets sold. Each product segment has 50% market share. In year 2 thanks to just basic increases in demand and new features more devices are sold. This year four million phones are sold and two million tablets. Now the market share of tablets has dropped to 33% despite increasing unit sales by 100% from the previous year. Different products have different growth rates. Comparing two categories directly is rarely useful.
As it stands the iPad still dominates the tablet market in terms of units sold even though its share of just the tablet market has decreased. This is due to expansion of the tablet market in the low end.
Tablets were never going to replace all PCs. Anyone suggesting they would or complaining that they haven't is a fool. Tablets have replaced some PC sales but have also simply added to the computing landscape. The PCs they replaced were the ones doing the same job as the tablets: reading, basic web stuff, and light gaming. Tablets just do that job in a more portable fashion.
Tablets in a "free fall" is just a ludicrous clickbait statement. Tablets are a form factor that was impractical for many years and are meeting that pent up demand. They're not going to replace all PCs nor will they get as ubiquitous as smart phones.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I use a PC for my main work, a small phone for calls and a tablet for entertainment. I like to read and the screen size of a phone is just too small for my old eyes. I could use a laptop, but they are bulkier and not as easy to use for some things.
I suspect too much is being read in to these numbers. For the most part updates to tablets have been incremental over the past several years. Other than a fixation in owning the latest and greatest, there's no real reason to upgrade. PC updates have stalled a lot earlier than that for the very same reason. It's not that there aren't tangible performance gains, but for what most people do the difference is negligible.
The mistake that so-called experts have made is to assume that the purchase of gadgets is some sort of zero sum game. When PC sales stalled they assumed that it was because of some sort of technological paradigm shift. The fact is that most PCs were still perfectly serviceable. So when it came time to spend on something they gravitated towards tablets. Of course, the economy was another big factor which was largely overlooked. Although, admittedly, that doesn't seem to stop many consumers from careless spending.
So now we're at a point where tablets have largely saturated the market and people have been using them long enough to know where their utility lies. This likely means growth is going to permanently remain modest for both PCs and tablets.
I have a 4" screen Android phone, for anything I need to do mobile-wise when I don't carry/have the laptop.
Relative actually gave me a little 7" Android tablet, and I installed a couple of games on it and played a few minutes. Used it about 3-4 times over a year and haven't looked at it in months even.
Market saturation has been reached for me. The newer generation of tablets don't really provide anything new in terms of functionality. The two I have do everything that I need them to do.
If the 'market' is static then thats a fall in share if its growing then its static or slower growing. Phones were pretty useless for other than phone use till the larger screened versions turned up (my phone is for calls and as a modem mostly, the screen is as big as needed for phone use).
Windows tablets seem to be around and cheap but they a) run windows and b) are short on ram to run windows.
If a desktop barely boots windows7 on 1gb and then takes 10 minutes to start word is windows8 going to be acceptable, i don't think so.
Android tablets I like but seem to be buggy slow and crash a lot to one degree or another, they are thrown out the door by manufacturers and orphaned from birth it seems. I've 3 or 4 tablets one of which gets used (mainly as an alarm clock) if it hasn't crashed. I considered buying a new tablet my last has ics,(my first had 1.6 and hardly any ram) but can't see a point in doing so, no one except google seems to be interested in supporting
their tablets, once you have bought them. Is it wrong to hope for a tablet that works properly and can handle a few upgrades to a current version of android.
I really don't like the way most of them will not support their customers, sure i understand that older models will have less ram storage and processor power and if they were kept up to date i'd move on to a current model at some point in time. I might even do so if they were open enough so third party developers could make the upgrades and fix the problems.
Apple i'm starting to like because while not cheap they do allow their customers to upgrade, don't like the walled garden but an iPad is looking like a better tablet option long term.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Now that the tablet market is starting to reach saturation and it's clear that tablets are not going to destroy laptops, can we get back to making good laptops? My 17-inch laptop is 8 years old and I opted to upgrade it rather than replace it because all of the new 17-inch models are either too bulky or don't have a respectable resolution for the size of the screen and price being charged.
The tablet market isn't really dead until Netcraft confirms it.
my cellphone contract was already up, and the iPhone was cheaper than a replacement iPod Touch
T-Mobile and the MVNOs itemize the hardware and the service plan. This means your total monthly bill decreases after the contract ends because the financed phone disappears from your bill. Compared to the old price structure of cellular service in the U.S., where everyone was expected to take a new subsidized phone every 24 months, this behaves like a discount for keeping your old phone. It's more in line with the pricing model of wired home Internet access, where the DSL or cable bill is all that's left once you've paid off the credit card bill for a new PC. Or is your carrier one of the few that refuses to give such a discount for not taking a subsidized phone?
I mean some people have a genuine need/use for a tablet however for most it is just a toy. They don't get it to replace a desktop and/or laptop, idiot tech journalist stories to the contrary, they get it in addition. It gets used for playing around, surfing the web on the couch, watching Netflix in bed, etc. It is just a toy. Nothing wrong with that, toys are fun, I have a tablet just for use as a toy. However that also makes it something not high up on the upgrade list. If all you are doing is some basic noodling around and nothing on it is important, then it isn't a big target to upgrade.
Is X going to kill the PC?
Anecdotal evidence is that yes, some people are eschewing general-purpose personal computers in favor of phones and tablets, possibly with a separate Bluetooth keyboard for text-heavy tasks. And yes, this is affecting the opportunity for their children to learn to program.
Anyone who thought that tablets were going to cannibalize the entire PC sector were delusional at best.
There was no way in hell this was going to happen.
Yes, for a small segment, mainly those who can get away with cheap, lightweight laptops, a tablet was probably a better fit.
But for any sort of power use, or business productivity? There's no way in hell a tablet was EVER going to replace high-end laptops and workstations. The form-factor was just too rigidly circumscribed and limited.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Frequent, documented proof of astroturfing means that I will perpetually regard any overly positive review of a Microsoft product with suspicion. Maybe I'm hearing from a real fan or satisfied user, maybe it's just a paid employee.
It's true, "Install Linux, problem solved!" is rarely if ever a useful answer to anything, but at least it's coming from an honestly deluded person (or a troll, but that's possible with pro-MS opinions, too), not a shill.
People keep exaggerating everything saying something is going to explode or crash. Enough already.
The tablet market exploded because they were new and people wanted to have one.
Now they do. They've entered the ecosystem of stuff we own but it isn't taking anything over.
I mostly use mine to watch movies while I web browse on my laptop. The tablet sits there, playing a movie streamed from my laptop harddrive or netflix and I am happy.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
nor are they dying. Neither are tablets. A tablet cannot replace a laptop or desktop PC. A phone (or phablet as phones with large screens are called) cannot replace a tablet. People just don't see the need to replace their desktop or laptop PC, or their tablet every year. These devices show little improvement from year to year. Oh, and everyone that I have talked to thinks that smartphones (phablets) are too large or are getting too large. Most people want to cary their phone in a pocket, something not possible if the phone is nearly the size of a 7 inch tablet. It is also awkward to use an overly large phone, and looks rather silly. One of my doctors bought an iPhone 6+. He swears that was a big mistake and that he will never do so again. Besides its obvious inferiority compared to Android phones, it is just too large to comfortably use for its primary function, that of making phone calls.
These types of articles about the death of the PC have been rampant for years. Yet despite falling PC sales, most people still have a desktop or laptop PC in daily use. PC sales have fallen because there is no need to replace them every year or two. The same is now happening with tablets. The poor economy has not helped sales of PCs or tablets either. People are holding on to their PCs, tablets, and even phones, and taking care of
of them better so that they last longer. This is at least partly because many people cannot afford to replace these devices.
Having a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard is far more reasonable when I'm overseas than lugging a laptop around.
Could you explain why this is the case, other than that manufacturers have arbitrarily decided to cease manufacturing 10" laptops?
The only content created by vast majority of the users are short emails, tweets, photos, selfies and short videos. Sometimes they write a term paper or fire a letter to their insurance company. All these needs are easily met. Unless suddenly we have 400 million people interested in editing video I don't see how their computational needs are going to increase. Even if suddenly everyone switches to secure computing and encryption doubling or tripling their computational needs, it still aint enough.
What is means to us coders is: the glorious subsidies we were getting for authoring machines (code, dvd, website, databases...) from the people buy way more powerful computers than they really need is going to come to an end. The disks and memory and screens are commodities now, used by all devices, they will continue to remain cheap. But my regular workstation at my office (256 GB memory, 2 quarter terabyte SSD and 2 half a terrabyte SCSI disks, 32 processors, 2 full HD screens) will not get much cheaper than what it is now.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here's another equally valid headline: Tablet sales and production in 2014 both up 25% over 2013.
Market is going up and future looking good, every tablet owner from last year didn't buy a new one from this year.
Any day now...a tablet we can run our favorite distro on...I'm on the pumpkin patch with Linus waiting for that day...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
I too carry a Dell Inspiron mini 1012 wherever I go on the bus. But companies stopped making 10" laptops at the end of 2012 in favor of 10" tablets with snap-on keyboards. And I have a 7" Android tablet that I use to browse the web one-handed.*
* I donate plasma twice a week. Get your mind out of the gutter.
The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed.
-- Benjamin Franklin
See?! The rich get the edge on everybody else by getting the latest tech sooner. Lousy 1%'ers, priming the tech pump for the rest of us.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This assumes that a "Phablet" is a Phone that's just bigger... and not a tablet that just has a cellular connection.
Assume the opposite and suddenly the phone market is dieing?
It's dumb no matter which way you look at it.
Look, we don't need a new tablet or cell phone every year.
People are realizing that.
Now fix your business model, instead.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
cell connection means you always have email the instant you open it, and any website is available any where.
That's also available for a laptop. And whether on a laptop or on a tablet, you still have to pay hundreds of dollars per year to a cellular carrier on top of the hundreds you already pay for cable or DSL Internet at home.
The number of edge cases where a laptop works but an ipad doesn't work keeps on shrinking.
But it won't shrink to zero. Because Apple will not allow a compiler on an iPad for the foreseeable future, people working in anything but Codea will still have to subscribe to cellular service and use SSH, RDP, or VNC to compile and test the programs remotely.
3 years later it will still perform that function just fine
Unless the API with which an application interacts has been deprecated and sunsetted in favor of a new API, and all the applications that work with the new API require a device newer than yours.
The replacement cycle for tablets is closer is much longer than the every 2 year cell phone market. I know several people with iPads that are working fine, they have no reason to replace them. I don't think anyone knows how long the cycle truly is, but my guess based on friends and family is 3-4 years.
The other issue is that cheap tablets have already taken all the profit out of the low end. Want something just to play video? Grab a $39 tablet and be happy.
Currently [...] I use an air2 with a keyboard. [...] When I need serious computing power, I just log into my home network and use the multiple xeons at my disposal.
What do you do when you "need serious computing power" but aren't within Wi-Fi range of your "home network"? For example, I pass the time while riding public transit by working on hobby coding projects. But because public transit around here doesn't provide Wi-Fi, I'd need to subscribe to an expensive cellular data plan in order to use an iPad for that. So instead, I continue to use a four and a half year old 10" laptop.
In 2012, week before Christmas - full size tablets and small tablets were 33% of the market. iPad for the quarter was 22.9 million units. In 2013, week before Christmas - full size tablets and small tablets were 29% of the market (decline 14%). iPad for the quarter was 26 million units (growth of 14%). Of course IDC - and their made up numbers had Apple market share down from 38.2% to 33.8%. This year - 2014 - flurry has the market shrinking to 22%. Apple numbers will be out soon and my be down but collapse - complete BS. Junk tablets may be collapsing but IDC makes those numbers up so who really knows.
Your ClamCased tablet is never going to be smaller and lighter than a/an netbook/ultrabook with the keyboard permanently attached (or even than a convertible/hybrid).
What netbook? I thought netbooks died.
Tethering. Mobile Wifi hotspot.
Each costing hundreds per year, on top of what you already pay your cable or DSL carrier for Internet at home.
They're essentially devices for consumption, not (largely) for production. Shortage of many common applications that exist on PCs.
Also their artificially lowered touch resolution (no pen input??? arrggh) kind of keeps arts apps off of them.
Separating content consumption vs content creation (tablet vs laptops) was a break through.
A breakthrough for the incumbent media publishers, that is. Even thinking in terms of "content" and "consumption" benefits the incumbent media publishers over public participation. Say someone buys an iPad instead of a general-purpose computer because he plans to view works of authorship that others have created and thinks he isn't likely to start creating new works. But two weeks later he ends up getting the itch to create new works. Now the iPad is a sunk cost, and he has to go in debt again to spend hundreds on a PC.
Remember when everyone bought netbooks because they thought they could run their entire life off a single core atom equivilant to a late model pentium 3 and 1GB of RAM on a 10" screen with a failure rate double that of budget laptops? Then they realized that wasn't realistic and they all ended up in pawn shops. Tablets are netbooks with no keyboard. I am so glad people are finally realizing it. I guess smart watches will crash in 2 years as well, although I think even right now nobody wants one.
Tablets need to be one of two things: cheap like paper notebooks, or useful like a PC. Without enough computing power for your PC OS and programs, and comfortable reliable interface for input and output, it'll never replace a laptop in the way that laptops largely did for desktops. That said, it could have a role as a semi-useful accessory in the same way that people used to buy walkmans and calculator watches. But with all but the most feeble of tablets still being three digits in price, that's not happening much either. The fact is that your tablet is barely more capable than your phone, but doesn't fit in your pocket and doesn't make phone calls. The novelty is wearing off, and people aren't going to keep paying through the nose to feel a little more trendy while they watch Netflix on their 11" tablet which costs more than their 3-foot flatscreen T.V., likely more than the cell phone that you'd have to pry out of their cold dead fingers anyway, and almost as much as the laptop that they use when they care about what they're doing and how much time they're wasting. Other than people with fairly specific daily mobile needs, when honestly viewed from a cost:benefit perspective, I doubt tablets are actually good for much of anything besides middle-class children and Starbucks aficionados who value shiny pretentiousness anyway.
Which is sad, because tablets *are* so damn shiny and cool, and make me feel like I'm on an episode of Star Trek. But doing your warp field calculations on one of these babies is more likely to get you ripped in half by a subspace distortion when your finger misses the keyboard key which doesn't exist or the speech recognition mishears a word, than to save you the time of booting up your laptop. Well yeah I know, maybe they aren't meant for warp field calculations...guess they're just priced like it.
What never really materialized was those really cool whiz-bang gesture-controlled applications we were all promised a few years back. Those commercials showing someone creating and manipulating a magazine page with tony-stark-like gestures... yeah, that never came to pass. All of those cool tablet-based workflows you saw in police procedurals... still fiction. At least on the consumer/prosumer level, tablets never got past simple media consumption. They tried to appeal to the power user but the software never really caught up. So tablets rapidly went from trendy to lowest common denominator -- someone who wanted basic web access and maybe Netflix. And lowest common denominator is a race to the bottom for designers and manufacturers, so the situation was not likely to get better.
Tablets didn't die out, they committed suicide, from self-induced neglect.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My wife has an iPad 3. no reason to replace it as it does everything perfectly for her. it's fast, it has a nice screen, the battery lasts forever. Mine is the ipad 4 and it works perfectly.
When am I going to get upgrades? when those break or there is a real reason to upgrade. My 3 year old Nexus 7 works perfectly for it's uses as well as my Surface Pro (version 1) that I use at work. No reason at all to replace them as they all still work and all still do the job.
In fact the surface pro 3 is a joke as it's the exact same specs as the 1 maybe if they made a quad i7 that boosted up to 4ghz came with 16gb ram and had a door that I could open to replace the battery and upgrade the SSD.. I'd buy a new one. But the exact same i5, screen, ram and SSD in the new one is 100% MEH.
In fact the Pro 1 is better than the 3. I can install linux and OSX on it if I choose to (I dual boot Win8.1 and Ubuntu) Cant do that on the 3 so it's inferior.
They need to make tablets cheaper and break easier if they want people to buy new ones ever year. Nice fast tablet at $199? I'll buy a new one yearly. but at $699 (or $1499 for the surface) It's not going to get replaced until I really need to.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Their profit margins are much higher on the iP6+
Nerval apparently doesn't understand the difference between relative and absolute, or they'd know it's possible to shrink as a percentage while growing in absolute terms. This isn't what's happening here, but iPad sales are certainly not collapsing, and iPads are really quite an important component of the market
http://www.statista.com/statis...
Flurry's numbers do NOT measure tablet sales in 2013 or 2014.
Flurry's numbers only measure tablet sales for the week of Christmas in each year.
I will give you 3G reason.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If they attatched keyboards to the tablets, and avoided using touch screens, they would be much more useful.
I think this would improve sales, and make them more versatile for situations like typing emails, or playing computer games.
got tablet after thanksgiving sales - $89 - 10" RCA tablet . works for 2 weeks die
can't power up. return to vendor for a full refund
experience - not very reliable, there are virtually no tech support
I'm still (very regularly) using my 2013 Nexus 7 and my kid loves her 2011 IPad and they both work perfectly. Tablets age rather well; performance and display res have been more than good for several years, and they don't get dropped down the toilet/left in a bar as much as phones.
It would be much more useful to see data from Apple/Google on daily device usage...
[FrLz]
What about the impact of apps that can't be transferred to a new device? I have a couple of time-waster games on my first tablet that can't be moved to a new device. A top question on their FAQs is "How do I transfer my game to a new tablet?" "You can't. Too bad, so sad." I wonder how many people are reluctant to upgrade because they spent $50 on crystals in some game and they don't want to throw it away.
I have several tablets (2 Android Nexus7s - one from 2012, and the other from 2013) , and an iPad mini along with my iPhone 6+. They all have uses and I don't think the larger iPhone actually replaces any of them. For reading books and magazines, for example the iPad is much preferable, as well as for playing games, like crosswords, cards, Mahjongg, Angry Birds, etc. For watching video, the Nexus 7 (2013) is preferable because of the excellent stereo w/pseudo surround sound that is provided by the built-in speakers), and because of the excellent color saturation of the display. The older Nexus 7, alas only serves as an alarm clock/music player because it is just too underpowered for anything else. The iPhone 6+, of course is the only one that fits on my pocket and is always with me. It is only an inch and a half or so smaller than the Nexus 7, but that makes all the difference when it comes to putting it in a pocket, not to mention that it's a phone too. The 6+ also has the best camera of the devices I own, so it is first choice for shooting photos and videos. A number of iOS apps that have iPad versions make me reach for the iPad since they look way better than the phone versions of the same app, even though the 6+ really could serve now that it's actually big enough to run an iPad version of the app were it written do do so.
The problem (for me) with my Nexus tablet is that it relies on wireless, and while WiFi is available in a lot of places it isn't everywhere, a phone is connected all the time and so makes a more "usable" device.
Yes I know the Nexus tablet has a cell version... read on...
If my Nexus could be connected all the time via my phone plan (a single bill) with unlimited data instead of %$^#&@* cheap ass way they handle tablet plans I would never leave home without it.
I think the biggest problem for mobile tech moving forward is connectivity, who controls that connectivity, and how much it cost.
With data caps and throttling the few folks that have unlimited plans mobile just sucks IMO.
Get rid of the greedy termites in control of the pipes and we can have something good.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You're going to be paying for the Internet connectivity anyway whether it's a tethered laptop or a tablet with appropriate radio circuitry built in.
If your device supports offline use, you don't have to pay any more than you're already paying for home Internet access. I've found laptops to be better at doing things offline than tablets running "mobile operating systems". For example, if I open a web browser, load a bunch of web pages in tabs, and close the lid, a Windows or Xubuntu laptop will still have them ready for me to read once I board the bus and bring it out of suspend. Tablets are more likely to "forget" the contents of all but the two most recently viewed tabs, instead going back to the Internet to reload the page. This is because iOS and Android are designed to avoid swapping at all costs, even if it means loss of access to data. Furthermore, an Atom laptop runs GCC at least as well as your Pentium 4-powered space heater PC used to, whereas an iPad can't run a compiler (and its output) at all because of its strict W^X policy.
T-Mobile and the MVNOs itemize the hardware and the service plan. This means your total monthly bill decreases after the contract ends because the financed phone disappears from your bill.
A few days [after I buy a new device] I get a text from AT&T. Oh by the way...when you were off contract we were giving you a $15/month discount.
(My emphasis.) In other words, AT&T has adopted the same billing practice as T-Mobile. Thanks for letting us know about this change.
Let's not fuck around here, the tablet market is the iPad market. And Apple is a victim of its own success; the iPad is a device that people use without replacing for a lot longer than anyone predicted, certainly nothing like the 18-month phone cycle. I'm still using a "The New iPad" (3rd-gen) purchased in early 2012 and it's still awesome. I've purchased 2 new phones and 2 new desktop computers in that time, but the almost 3-year-old iPad just keeps on keeping on.
I was under the impression that tablets had killed 10" laptops.
They still exist.
Warranted ones or only as-is used ones? If warranted, where?
Tablets are handy, great for playing games that would be to small on your phone. Great for kids to watch movies on (i have a 32gb card with about 40 movies in the 10 year olds tablet). Good for a coffee stand that has 10 menu items and a credit card swiper plugged into it. But for real work (involving typing, connecting to other devices) they just dont seem to do it well. You can get a flipopen bluetooth keyboard case but then you have 2 seperate devices with 2 different connectors to charge. My wife school gave her an ipod to use for work, besides watching netflix on it, it never get used. A regular $350 laptop works much better.
A comment on the linked story notes Flurry is only counting cellular activations. This ignores the majority of tablets that are WiFi only
Who says marketing doesn't work,
they make it fashionable, sell lots, then bring in the next fashion.
You're a flock of sheep. .... sent from my rusty old beige box with the side off
If they herded you to the edge of the cliff, you'd be all too happy to jump.
Go well
The SP3 is available with 8GB of RAM and the screen presents a better color gamut and higher resolution compared to the original Surface Pro. That's ignoring the newer-generation CPU, better battery life, less cramped screen, and noticeably lighter weight. But yeah, meh, since that's only how all computer lines evolve.
Look, some genius "analyst" has figured out that people don't buy ten tablets per person. Next up: The food market collapses because people do not increase their daily food amount constantly.
This fixation on "growth" as if by magic everything would grow indefinitely is the primary evil in our world today. I've seen perfectly healthy companies with good revenue and solid profits being closed because they're not growing to the amount the corporate owners wish for.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So people realised it's more convenient to have phone functionality in their tablet, and total tablet market has grown, according to these stats. Sure, some people find it convenient to separate the two, but what's the point? Does a tablet/phone have a different effect on the "post-PC" world than a tablet without phone functionality?
So, my experience may be part of the reason the market is not there. In my way-back machine, I had one of the original "Pocket Pc's", a HTC 8525. I liked the device (it was really more of a tiny computer than phone) with the slide out keyboard, and integrated well with Office. When I finally laid it to rest (sadly), the one issue I had was that my eyes no longer could cope with the screen size (I tended to use it to type full emails, not just quick texts) and some spreadsheet work. In any case, at the phone store, I asked; "What's your biggest device?" And was handed the original Galaxy Note (which I just replaced with a Note 4). Through this period, tablets were theoretically the "hot item" (as well as all the electronic book thingies). Never saw the purpose. With the Note, I could pretty much do what the folks carrying both the phone, and tablet around could do. And it was a phone. The marketing gurus, I believe, missed the impact of the larger devices (really can't call them phones, and phablets is too goofy). For what people use a tablet for the Galaxy (and the iPhone 6+) handle. If I need computing power, either a desktop or laptop, but not a tablet.
OK.. the headline says "Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes" and immediately after his dsubmission says it "doesn't come to quite that stark a conclusion," THat's an unabashed "click grabber" more suited to Lyn and Lisa's posts on "Before it's News". Not /. ....Oh the depths we have plummeted to! Woe woe is we...
The Surface will never be a useful device so long as Microsoft insists on blocking installs of other systems via Secure Boot. If I buy the product I should have the right to install anything I want on it; if I'm merely renting I demand much better terms for the lease. They don't get to have it both ways.
Otherwise I was very much intrigued by the Surface as I've been impressed with Microsoft's hardware in the past but not at the expense of having to run their operating system to use the device.
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Thank you. But for how long will there continue to be ample dual-core netbooks on eBay at reasonable prices? And you never mentioned warranty; I don't want to be out of pocket for something that fails 7 days after I get it.
I suggest the reason there is a decrease in the rate of purchase for tablet is they are so stable, functional sufficient and with no moving parts semi infinite in their lofean, no one feels the need to update them with a new model. With smartphones, there are new cameras, stronger and less prone to vreakage screens for devices that get a lot of rough handling. There is also the two year contract and replacements for phones after that with the old smartphone becoming the ipod equivalent in the car so circumstances of longevity is the reason there is a drop in the rate of acquisition. It os that simple..people love the or tablets and their tablets live forever...or at least iPads do...
I Read Here that tablets are now coming in a best budget from various brands like Tesco, Aldi, Argos and others .. This story also features list and prices which also includes Google Nexus 7..
Different devices are used for different things. Cars, bike, motorcycles, and scooters all are transport vehicles but nobody says, "Hey my Porsche is better than your mountain bike in all things." I would hate to go through the woods in my boxter, and I would hate to do the autobahn on my scooter.
The same with my tablet, my phone, my laptop, and my desktop. They all are different things that in theory can do overlapping things but each one tends to have some virtue over the others. So my tablet really sucks at software development but rocks at Netflix while in bed. My laptop doesn't do development as well as my desktop but it is better when on the road. Even games on each device have a subtly different flavor on every single platform.
So what people really need to look at is not the device but what message people want from their devices. People want Netflix and thus a TV is going to rock that world. People want to text and do chats which means smaller phones. But as city wide wifi and cheaper data plans become prevalent I suspect that surfing the web will partially migrate to portable devices which will probably drive people to even larger phones.
But what I don't see is a growing message where tablets are best. Netflix in bed is never going to allow for world beating sales. I use my tablet for a few strange things such as watching lectures and reading textbooks in pdf form; but at least for now is not a massive market.