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The Great Tablet Gold Rush Is Over (mashable.com)
Earlier this month, Dell announced that it will no longer sell Android tablets. The company added that slate tablet market is "over-saturated" and is "experiencing declining demand from consumers." The company says it will focus more on 2-in-1 -- otherwise known as hybrid laptops -- devices moving forward. Dell is right. According to IDC, tablet sales have fallen greatly in the last few years. Mashable goes on to say that the "great tablet gold rush is over." From an article: Pretty much every major tablet maker's growth fell year-over-year. Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tabs, the two most popular brands of tablets, were down 18.8% and 28.1%, respectively. [...] In the beginning, the pitch was: The tablet is the future of computing. It'll replace your phone and your laptop. Then it became: A small tablet will replace your smartphone. Today, the pitch: It's good enough to replace your laptop. But only for some people, and only if you're willing to get by with a mobile OS. Long story short: Tablets are a complete mess right now. We can't seem to decide if we want them to replace all of our devices or only a few of them.
It is probably market saturation. It happened with music players a decade ago and happens to almost every other invention.
The touch interface sucks for a lot of things, making it a lame replacement for many things. Browsing the web is good. Games are are largely bad. Many really need a game pad or mouse style input to be decent. So while an ipad can easily run doom or quake level stuff with ease, mostly the bad control interface ruins them.
Typing sucks on a touch interface, too slow for anything beyond a few sentences at a time.
So our ipads mostly get used to watch Netflix while cooking dinner, playing music, checking news, and not much more. Much of the promise is ruined by a lack of mouse and keyboard.
I've used a tablet to take notes, read books, do research, keep kids busy, surf the net etc over the last 6 or so years (I have a gen 1 Galaxy Tab 8.1)
The only thing I still use it for is reading books, and occasionally as an ODBII reader with Torque. It hasn't replaced anything, it's just another computer I use in situations where a smartphone isn't big enough (or I need the smartphone for something else) and a laptop is too big.
I admit it. I have two tablets. I have a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9 (both Android tablets for those who don't know). I've used both as e-readers (for both Google Play and Kindle books), as occasional consumption devices (youtube, netflix, light web browsing) and not much else. I can't call them anything other than a luxury device. Do I enjoy reading books on my phone? Hell no. Can it be done? Sure. Does a tablet replace a full computer with a "real" OS like MacOS (OS X), Windows, or Linux? Not a chance. I do most of my computing on a 2-in-1 these days - either a MS Surface or a Lenovo X1 Tablet. But those are not tablets in any sense of the word, they are Windows computers. Most of the rest is on the phone. I still use the tablets - every night I read on one for several minutes in bed before sleeping. But I'd be kidding myself and deceiving all of you if I thought they were anything but luxury devices.
Agree. If you could add a chorded keyboard into a "grip" for one side that would go a long way to helping...assuming people would be willing to learn the chorded keyboard.
First they came for the desktops, but I didn't care, I could use a laptop with an external screen and keyboard. ... Tablets!
Then they came for the laptops, but I didn't care because
Then they came for the tablets, and I didn't care because Smartphones make tablets feel like boat anchors.
You can have my smartphone when you pry it from my cold dead hands!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe the people at Apple will get off their asses and finally update their computers.
Will the 2016 Mac minis be as pathetic as the 2014 models? Not only do we need to be able to upgrade the RAM and HDDs/SSDs but a socketed CPU would be a welcome addition.
But then again, I don't need a laptop for most of what I do, in terms of personal, recreational leisure. I don't even need a desktop. I use my desktop pretty much when i'm having breakfast.
I read books. I watch movies. I do a bit of web surfing. I look at radar when the sky turns battleship gray. I read/write email. And that's about it. A tablet does all that very well, especially the movie, book, web and radar parts.
If I'm home, or on a plane, or in a hotel, I use the tablet. (first model of iPad Air)
When I'm out and about, I use my phone. (iPhone 5S)
The two have different missions and due to my tastes in size, there is no common ground. I don't like a big phone and I don't like a little tablet.
Both, however, have almost identical loads in term of apps, books, etc. They have identical screen layouts. It's seamless, for me, to go from one to the other.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I think if people could use the same data plans on tablets that they use with their phones the demand would be greater. But as of now, mobile companies are afraid of tablets because they think tablet users would suck away all their precious data. I think some people settle for the smaller phone screen for that reason.
Desktops still not dead.
I use them mostly for gaming. I've found phone screens to be too small, both from a visual perspective, as well as an interface perspective. I couldn't imagine trying to use them for productivity though. Can you get BT keyboards (or use the on-screen keyboard)? Sure, but both typically sacrifice something (appearance, feel, layout) to remain portable. Even laptop keyboards don't feel right compared to a desktop keyboard.
Having said that, as others have suggested, they do have their limited uses. Watching videos, browsing the web and performing basic tasks (sending an e-mail, updating a spreadsheet, making minimal edits to a document) all fit within reasonable use for them. I also think as their prices come down they will be a basic addition for most people for just those very reasons: performs all of the tasks they can with their phone, but on a significantly larger and easier to see/interact with screen. I know the Galaxy Tab S2 is a natural complement to folks that use the S6 or S7: you can take calls/texts received by your phone on the tablet. I wouldn't be surprised to see similar functionality on iPads for folks with iPhones.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Hell is a place of eternal torment, in which there is no hope of peace or salvation...
...or of good free Wi-Fi or more than a bar of mobile phone signal, so your tablets/laptops/smartphones won't be very good there anyway. Oh, and they don't have any wired Ethernet, either.
Most people see a tablet and know what they want to do with it, or are surprised when it's better than expected. Only tech reviewers and vendor marketing departments were planning on tablets replacing all those things listed. I bought mine because I wanted a tablet, not a phone replacement or a laptop replacement or an interactive dinner plate/hack du jour. I assume most of it is due to a need to generate sales and page views and all that, but mostly I found it was all fairly silly. I like my tablet because it's a tablet, stop trying to tell me why I _should_ like it.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
"Tablets are a complete mess right now. We can't seem to decide if we want them to replace all of our devices or only a few of them." There is nothing wrong with the tablets, it's the PEOPLE that have problems. If you do web browsing, videos, maybe a game of Angry Birds or Candy Crush, and not much else you go with an Android/iOS tablet. If you do more serious tasks such as office work, video editing, programming, or you play the more "heavier" games, you go with a "cinvertable" tablet running Windows with an Intel Atom processor, and had a detatchable keyboard, or you just get a traditional laptop. What about this is hard to understand?
Tablets were never going to replace anything, they're a flawed compromise between everything else. Manufacturers pushed them in the hopes that they could expand the relevance of the new mobile walled gardens, and the media fueled the hype because blind consumerism. Tablet OEMs who started designing keyboards into new tablets were ahead of the curve.
Tablets are for consumption, not production. Only now are people realizing this, so their tablet upgrades are laptops or nothing. If you don't need a video clipboard, you don't need a tablet.
Those things just don't die, I have still iPads 1 and 2 running quite nicely.
GOOD! Maybe now they can give us wireless charging.
The uUSB port get destroyed in normal usage.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The sensors, screen, processor, resolution can be astounding... ...But getting anything done other than consumption on a tablet or cellphone is a daunting frustrating process, with limited, underwhelming software, and operating systems that can't work, only play.
No files and folders on IOS.
No backspace key on the Android virtual keyboards.
Constant nagging and notifications.
A culture of constant app spying and insane permissions.
Devices with operating systems that aren't even supported for 3 years, in spite of reaching the end of Moores Law.
Utter dependence on the cloud for ordinary things.
If you have work to do a 1990s desktop computer will eat many modern cellphones or tablets computer for lunch.
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When Yahweh stops by and says "Hi", and I mean physicaly and not just in your mind, let me know. Remember, everybody's religion is the only true religion and its this kind of bullshit that turned me agnostic
Step 1: Apple introduced the iPad and everybody was desperate to get one because it was the trendy item to have.
Step 2: people started figuring out what they could do with a handy portable computer.
Step 3: everybody who had a use for a tablet had one and the sales dropped off to replacement level.
Any remotely interesting new product is going to grow at unsustainable levels until the market is saturated. Then the growth stops.
...laura
The company says it will focus more on 2-in-1 -- otherwise known as hybrid laptops -- devices moving forward
Now the tablet-sold-with-a-shitty-bluetooth-keyboard gold rush begins!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Tablet manufacturers just need to hit that sweet spot that GPU manufacturers have. Create a product that is able to play everything on high and help develop things that need more power to play. We just need to develop new apps that require a lot more overhead that current gen tablets cannot handle.
Pass. Take your snakeoil eleswhere.
The desktop PC is dead! Long live the desktop PC! The laptop is dead! Long live the laptop! The tablet is dead! Long live the tablet! Same song, different verse. Tablet's have their own unique use case. The people that thought they were a replacement for laptops are finding out the limitations of a tablet. Tablets will be around for along time just like laptops and desktops that all have their own place.
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But only after you die. Lead by example... you first.
No SD slot is what is keeping me from replacing my old Toshiba Excite 10. My use case is previewing photos from the DSLR on the tablet. Much better than using the small built in screen on the camera. Leave the laptop at home and the tablet is much lighter in the bag.
Small use case but definitely a demand among photographers.
Also what happened to the affordable ($300) 10.1" tablets?
It's more likely that Microsoft's two billion dollar investment in Dell has something to do with this.
Good for surfing the web on the couch or reading a book. Anything that requires actual work, requires better I/O devices like actual keyboards and mice.
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We can't seem to decide if we want them to replace all of our devices or only a few of them.
No, 'we' haven't shown any confusion on the matter.
The tablet fills the niche of folks who needed 'good enough' compute power in a no-muss, low weight form factor. Analysts and tech media got caught up in the adoption rate by the large untapped market and assumed such a huge surge in sales *surely* meant it was going to supersede personal computers.
Fast forward to today, tablet sales have flatlined because the 'good enough' market has gotten their devices and there's not much of a drive to upgrade constantly. Phones got a bit of a boost by manipulative service plans 'subsidizing' the cost of a phone every two years, but now that's faltering as carriers move away from that, as people *mostly* weren't upgrading for latest and greatest function, but because they were getting one 'for free' every couple of years and 'hey why not' in that scenario.
Meanwhile PC sales have certainly faltered, but not as severely. That market is still driven to some extent by upgrades, at least moreso than the tablet market.
Note that this is bad news for hardware makers and suggests large investments won't pay off in that space, but it does not mean a software developer should ignore the install base.
Personally, I have a desktop, a 12" windows tablet (lenovo x1 tablet) and a 10" android tablet (yoga tab 3 pro). My desktop is for games that can make use of the high wattage components. My windows tablet is basically general laptop usage, with the option to occasionally rip off the keyboard. My android tablet is the best for reading various media (in part because there is a lack of touch friendly windows applications for reading, in part because the hardware form factor with the smaller screen and the bigger battery oriented in a convient way make it better for holding to read).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My tablet does replace my computer, at home anyway. I use it to Google whenever my curiosity is piqued, I pay my bills online, check my email, read the news, read books, listen to music and occasionally watch video. I rarely use my desktop or laptop computer at home anymore. My tablet is always nearby, all day long.
If I need to write at length then I might sit in front of my computer but that is rare at home. I do use a computer at work but even then the tablet is nearby playing music with a remote to hand.
I don't know about you but I would rather give up my home computer than my tablet. Still I can see where most people would not need to buy a new one every year or even every two years like some do with phones. I suspect that might have a lot to so with the drop in sales. Most everyone has a perfectly good tablet already. There is no compelling reason to upgrade.
Just give me a good magnetically mated copper-to-copper dock.
This chase after wireless charging through massively less efficient inductive charging is asinine. People didn't *literally* need it to be wireless, they just wanted something that would self-guide and charge and come off easy without thinking about a cable.
I would love it if Moto Z took their pins on the back and made a 'wireless-like' charging dock.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Bought one (Dell Venue) in 2013 or 14 mainly to have a lightweight deivce capable of connecting to a soundcard a do acoustics measurement, serves perectly well for this. Does a decent job browsing the web, can do most office/mail work, can even do some DTP in case of emergency. Serves well to play video when on the road. After all the time the battery does a good job so I guess it will be at least two more years before I buy a new device.
It hasn't replaced anything
Sounds to me like it replaced books and your ODBII reader.
.. get sex. Now that everybody has such a bloody tablet, the 'special' about it is gone. Nobody cares if their potential mate has one or not. So people stop buying them for themselves. Yes, saturation.
Two words: Surface Pro
I think this device points the way forward. My original objection to tablets (the phone-based OS) has proven more durable than even I expected. Consolidation of the OSes seems inevitable, which then allows the apps from both the desktop and phone markets to work on the same device. Sure they will give very different experiences. Once it's possible then those apps will adapt to the new world or go away.
The Surface Pro has the full desktop OS with touch support. The keyboard is there when you need it and detached when not. And the more capable CPUs used in them eat more battery life... except it's a tablet, not a phone. Get a bigger battery, it's not rocket science. The tablet can host a much bigger battery than a smartphone.
See also: The Gartner Hype Cycle
I would say my 10 inch Note is very much worth it. But replacing it with something bigger and better won't do more then this dinosaur.
IOW, the inital market is gone and now the market is just replacement machines.
I don't have a smartphone, so I use my tablet for many things. Scan documents. Take pictures of things I am repairing so I know how to put them back together ( :) ). Viewing videos while I'm eating ( amazing how many videos of learning things are out there ), plus putting it next to my desktop while working and using it to read documentation so I have more power on my machine for my development tools.
I can't imagine a laptop doing many of these things. maybe a chromebook...
Er pardon me but it's not the public that have killed off tablets its the makers,there are hundreds of not very good tablets about,then you have ipads,but there is very little in between the two,the last decent tablet thatbdidnt cost an arm and half a leg was the nexus lte,since then,prices have gone way up and I don't know about America,but the networks in the eu have murdered the tablet by insisting that anything with bigger than 6. inch screen is a tablet and blocking the use of normal phone Sims and insisting that you have to use a mobile broadband dongle SIM,which are 5 times as pricey for the same mount of data as phone Sims.
I don't count WiFi only tablets as as real tablets,a "real" tablet has lte,can make calls and send texts just like a mobile phone,in fact a real tablet is just a normal decent speced mobile phone that happens to have a bigger screen.
It makes me scream that the networks excuse for banning the use of tablets on phone Sims was that they move more data because of the bigger screen !!! And yet we now have mobiles with 6 inch 2 and 4k screens that move an awful lot more data than lower resolution tablets,but can you imagine the outcry if networks tried to up tariff prices for any phone on their networks with higher resolution than 1080hd ?.
I loved my original galaxy tab gtp1000,but then it was made impossible to use as intended,then I got nexus lte,to use with one particular network,giffgaff,but their service descended to unusable and so I have had to go back to using big screened mobile phones,not because I want to but because various companies have forced me to,so who has killed the tablet idea ?
Does this mean we are transitioning from tablets to tablet PCs?
Was Microsoft way ahead of its time with the tablet PC in 2002?
Tablets are niche, tablets are useless, bladiblah ... lots of diminishing talk about tablets here.
Let me offer a different perspective:
I happen to be an accidental tablet user turned convinced tablet user. I got the HTC Flyer back when it's price was coming down. For programming and fiddling. I ended up carrying it with me every day pretty quickly. 1,5 years ago I replaced it with a 10" Yoga 2. Awesome device. 18hrs battery time and aside from programming and typing the best computer-stuff consumption device ever.
However, for tablets to gain attention and usage again, they need upgrades:
1.) Pen input. The HTC Flyer was sort of feasible with its pen, but not quite there yet. iPad Pro shows how it needs to be done, but those are way to expensive - an MB Air is cheaper. ... This will take another generation or two, but when we have affordable feasible pen input with that necessary maximum 20 millisecond delay, we can really start ditching paper finally and for real.
2.) Storage. The amount of storage on these devices is a joke. A tablet is also a prime media consumption device and as such should have the appropriate storage. 256 or 500GB minimum IMHO. I'm still waiting for that to happen. My trusty yoga falls short in this dept. just as much as any other old tablet for 99 euros.
3.) Battery time. The Yoga is the only tablet that is truly mobile in that regard and way ahead of anything else on the market. Way over 15hrs of uptime off the grid. Very nice and - IMHO - an absolute minimum must. Any tablet running under 15hrs should be ashamed of itself.
4.) Ruggedness. A tablet has to survive everyday use. Again, the Yoga is one of those rare exceptions, although even it could do better with an all aluminium back for sturdiness and heat dispersion. The flimsy thin apple devices aren't really setting a good example. Given, you do get a bazillion cases for the apple stuff, because Apple, but that bumps the already steep price of those by another 100 - 150 Euros. Meh.
5.) Zero-fuss file handling and transfer. Here's where all tablets, including the recent android ones, fail miserably. They all force you to go through a silly amount of hoops, half of which don't really work that well and reliably, to transfer data and files to and from them. Unacceptable. How am I supposed to accept a tablet as a serious device if this doesn't work??
6.) Repairablility. A tablet device even more than a smartphone lends itself to the idea of being opened for battery or screen replacement or storage upgrade. This needs to come before people use them for really serious stuff, no matter how powerful they are. Sturdy cases with screws and solid repairablity is what's needed.
7.) RAM. 2 gigs of RAM is silly, and that's a lot by tablet standards. 4-8gigs are minimum for a tablet in regular use and with reliable pen processing. This should be a no-brainer aswell, but tablet vendors have yet to deliver (and no, that MS tablet notebook surface thingie for north of 2000 euros doesn't really count as a tablet as an everyday everywhere universal handheld consumption and computing device)
8.) Convergence. Last but not least, tablets need to be fully ready for convergence by the next generation - that's just about a no-brainer. Apple is preparing that already in their slogans and, for once, Ubuntu & Aquaris/BQ and Remix/Jide have actually gone ahead and shown how it's done. This has to be a regular thing, also if mobile OSes are involved. I expect tablets to be way more positioned to lead the convergence revolution than smartphones. I'm sure that's going to happen within the next 3 years.
Bottom line: I love myself a good tablet (as outlined above) and I love the fact that they are basically the upgrade to books, magazines, notebooks and portable TVs/VCRs all wrapped into one. I think they shoudln't go away and have yet to reach their actual potential.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So they are still selling more than before. Just not more more? (Or morerer, as the technical lingo goes)
I bought mine because I wanted to browse a few stuff on travel, watch a few youtube outside my computer room, like browse in the park, and a small use taking note and maintaining RPG characters (yes paper and pen is better but I can't read my scratches anymore...). Very limited use, but also pretty much I knew what i wanted to do with it.
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The tablet has some pretty tight bounds, but working within those bounds can make a pretty powerful muscle in its own right. I bought my tablet for about a c note a gazillion years ago, and after playing with it a while, let it collect dust. Then I used it for a TV remote, and for playing podcasts on my 3+ hour commute. Now it has Guitar Tuna, Kodi, a flavor of Python and I somehow got Touch Vim to spell check! It's pretty sweet with a full size Bluetooth keyboard. I even watch internet TV on it. Now, it doesn't do everything - it's stuck on Android 4.4, so no editing files to the external storage, does not have a full featured LibreOffice or other such muscles, and I've given up on mirroring to a larger screen. But when I install VNC, it becomes the on-the-road front end to my other computers. And if that works well, it might inspire me sign up for an AWS/Digital Ocean VC. Imagine using a tablet to control all that muscle! I'm impressed with that tablet more than ever, and plan on getting another. Eventually.
of course it is.
but it's so quick compared to pc saturation is that there is absolutely no need to buy a new tablet if you already have one.
and why is that? a new tablet does not get the people access to any new apps, media or use cases for their tablet! so why the fuck would you upgrade a "retina" ipad for a newer one? you don't get any new killer app. the apps don't appear to run faster after they launch, the apps don't look better if you buy a new one - so why would you buy a new one???
the only reasons for upgrade would be better battery life or higher resolution screen or such, and for most a fullhd 7" is enough anyways. heck, most consumers dont really care for more than fullhd on 15" devices either.
yes.. but the point is that your 6 year old tablet does all the things a new laptop would do.
you wouldn't gain new use cases by buying a new tablet. so you're not buying another.
that doesn't mean that there isn't a market for tablets, just that there's less upgrade cycle needed than with some other things.
They killed the market themselves, by making phones ever larger, and equating size with capability. Smaller phones are always barely-capable budget models now, pushing people who want decent internals to the big phones. The big phones crowded out the smaller tablets--which cost a lot less--leaving only the big/expensive tablets. Most people have either already bought an expensive tablet (and have no desire to purchase another), or just can't afford one. The current market is a direct result of their greed.
Offer a good small phone, and a good midsize tablet, and keep the prices reasonable (examples: Nexus 7 2013, Moto X 2013, iPhone SE). If that doesn't sell, *then* you can declare the market dead.
I never understood the need for a tablet since when the phablets came out. I have big hands and no trouble with large screen smartphones, i.e. phablets.
I have a 5.7 inch display Samsung Galaxy Note, which does most if not all the tricks a tablet does, and many many more since its a phone too.
In the end the gold rush was over before I even joined.
Big brittle screens are going to break far more easily then small brittle screens simply because they have more length to twist over.
It sucks.
At least e-ink is starting to get flexible plastic screens instead of glass but they are still rare. LCD tablets with flexible screens may follow in a few years, but until then is you don't treat them like glass the glass breaks.
Watch the old ST:TNG episodes. See how the LCARS tablets are used. Even as a simple prop it's pretty revealing. They replace paper. PCs replaced typewriters, but not notebooks and printouts. Tablets take care of that. Many of the comments here elude to that fact without actually stating it. The use cases are for viewing photos, reading documents, etc. In a pinch you can create media with them, but just as writing with a typewriter was faster and more efficient than hand writing, using a tablet for composition isn't as good as using a PC running a basic word processing program. Notepad apps are still evolving but I find having a synchronized notebook to be very handy and the use case is very much like the old paper day planners and spiral notebooks, but much easier to edit and organize later on the PC. I can't tell you when I last used a printer, other than to get large photos printed out at Costco.
Not to mention the low end 7" tablets aren't very good at those functions because the screen isn't large enough, and usually the display doesn't have the necessary color correction or resolution to be effective (including the iPad mini). Earlier this year I picked up a 9.7" iPad pro. The display is fantastic. It makes reading a pleasure. The keyboard is a disappointment, the pencil is just OK, but the display's color gamut and the light temperature sensor are worth it -although most buyers aren't going to notice it until they get it home and use it for a few days, so that's a very hard sell with Apple's markup.
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For me, tablet is a godsent computing device. I don't want a smartphone because I don't want to be online 24/7, I also prefer the 14 day battery life of my dumbphone. I am on my second iPad now, and find I am using my laptops less and less. The 10" screen is the perfect form factor for me, It always fits in my backpack even with groceries. I have a mobile broadband modem so I get to decide when I want to be online. I have an USB/SD card reader box for dealing with removable media. I have the Apple pencil for using remote desktops which gives me the accuracy of a mouse. If I need a keyboard, I connect my trusty old Lenovo thinkvantage keyboard.
I never used to mess around with 3D modeling software until the 123D app. The touch UI just makes so much sense for 3D modelling.
If only there was access to desktop level software - I'd probably sell my laptop. The software is the only thing holding things back. But even as things are now, I am using my tablet every day, and my laptop maybe once a week.
Tablets make the notion of going to a meeting with a laptop seem anachronistic.
YMMV as usual, just wanted to give my opinion. I've been using computers since I was a toddler, like most of you fwiw
and yet there hasn't been a decend 10" tablet released with good specs since the Motorolla Xoom or Nexus 10, most have way to large bezels, or have crap big physical buttons(samsung), or are just plain ugly (silver).. Still waiting for a good tablet with a rubberized back (like the Nexus 5, or the top of the Xoom), small bezels, good battery and a decent screen (at least FullHD)..