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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.
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.
Why would anyone care if stupid people laugh at them?
Because those stupid people in a hospital are nurses and doctors. Give them an opportunity to look down on you as an I.T. professional and you will never hear the end of it. As an I.T. contractor, I worked in a wide variety of companies with different cultures. A hospital is perhaps the most hostile work enviornment. Either you fall in line with the pecking order or the door hits your ass on the way out.