Slashdot Mirror
Tablet Shipments Decline For Eighth Straight Quarter, No Company Surpassed 10 Million Units (venturebeat.com)
Similar to the smartwatch market, the tablet market is in rough shape. According to estimates provided by IDC, the tablet market has been in decline for eight quarters in a row, and no company managed to ship more than 10 million units. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2016 saw a 14.7 percent year-over-year decline: 43 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 50.5 million units in the same quarter last year. Both Apple and Samsung saw their shipment numbers fall once again, though Apple gained share, up 1.9 points to 21.5 percent market share. Samsung slipped 0.9 points to 15.1 percent, but still shipped more than double the units than those behind it. This is the third time that Amazon has placed in the top five in a non-Q4 quarter -- typically, the company only shows up due to the holiday season. The company's low-cost Fire tablet has propelled the company to the top, though the growth shown is skewed by the fact that IDC did not include the 6-inch tablets offered by Amazon in Q3 2015. Lenovo shipped fewer units but grew 0.3 percent to 6.3 percent share, while Huawei shipped more units and gained 1.9 points to 5.6 percent. Both companies have maintained their positions for many quarters now and don't look like they will be displaced.
The kids are fine with the tablet we have now, we'll replace it when it breaks but it runs Youtube, Bloons TD and Angry Birds just fine, no reason to upgrade it.
I bought my kids iPad minis years ago. They all still work just fine.
New models dont really offer much over the previous ones at this point. Also, just because its falling doesn't mean it wont level out at some point.
Is this surprising?
People who want tablets already have them by now. People who don't want them aren't going to buy one.
You're left with a very small market segment. People who have a tablet old enough to warrant replacing, people who always wanted one but previously couldn't afford one, but then got a nice promotion at work or something ... and that's it?
Unlike the smart watch market however, people do want tablets. It's a good form factor for media consumption. Sales should stabilize at some point. We're still just getting over the initial "gold rush" period to find the actually year-to-year purchase rate .
This signature is false.
More CPU? More wireless? More resolution? More GPU? Make the lens on camera really great or add a set off 3 different lenses?
Change out the cpu, gpu and OS so all users have to hardware upgrade for the best new apps?
Games that need new hardware can be created to push hardware branding.
A new cpu and gpu needed every cycle to keep up with the great code and graphics?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Any Android tablet should be able to connect to a Bluetooth keyboard (just like any Android phone). I don't know about iOS but Android is by far the largest number of devices anyway.
Does this mean we can have normal web UI back again? Remember, when buttons and menus didn't take up a good 30% of the overall page space? Like beta? Fsck beta for even having been an example of this.
I suppose the subject says it all. I have 3 in the house (I won't use one, but the women do). 2 iPads of various vintages and an Android tablet. No one is dying for an upgrade. This is the problem with selling gadgets with walled gardens. No one tries to do more than you allow with them.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
iPads, and even iPhones, can connect to Bluetooth keyboards and use them just fine. In fact, some UX exists solely if you have a keyboard, such as the Cmd-Tab task switcher. The iPad Pro models also have the smart connector keyboards. They're pretty decent - as a touch typist I have no problem using them.
That said, an onscreen keyboard is fantastic when you just want to hold the device in your hands. Would I want to do a ton of typing that way? Absolutely not. But when it's useful, it's incredibly useful.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
i thought you can only use bluetooth for handsfree on idevices
It doesn't help that the last flagship tablet releases by Samsung (the Tab S2) and Google (Nexus 9) were not only expensive, but disappointingly 4:3 aspect ratio, making them poor for games and videos. I think Samsung's Tab S 8.4" and 10.5" tablets were the pinnacle w.r.t. the display on an Android tablet and there's been nothing since then worth buying. Heck, Google completely ignored tablets at their last launch, instead flogging clearly overpriced phones. If a Samsung Tab S3 came out with a 16:10 display like the Tab S, but with more RAM/faster CPU/GPU, then I'd probably first in line to buy it.
It's sad that my venerable Nexus 10 is still pressganged into service (with CyanogenMod on it of course, like all my tablets) - it was the last decent large tablet Google sold. It's no wonder tablets are dropping in sales - the Android tablet manufacturers in particular have almost given up making an effort to create a decent tablet. Yes, I know about the Yoga Book, but the price is a little steep considering the specs aren't fantastic and you can't detach the display and use it as a standalone tablet.
Sales of cell devices like tablets and phones are flat or declining - so there's no growth, but people expect lower prices and 5G build-outs. DirecTV is also declining. AT&T can obfuscate their numbers behind a Time Warner merger.
Maybe I am not around a representative demographic, but it sure seems like there are more and more Surface tablets around, with several major corporate roll-outs starting.
Tablets peaked about two years ago, when you could get a decent tablet with a high-but-not-insane resolution touchscreen (and S-Pen in the case of Samsung) and you could beam the screen contents to any miricast-compatible TV, projector or dongle.
Now, as more useful features are being removed, there is very little compelling reason to upgrade.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I don't understand Google. The Nexus 7, both 2012 and 2013 were big sellers. But no new Nexus 7 has been released in 3 years. As such, I haven't bought a tablet for myself or anyone in my family since 2013. 7"-8" is perfectly sized for a tablet, any bigger you might as well get a laptop. The Nexus 7 was also perfectly priced. I'm not going to buy a Samsung tablet with all it's bloated software, nor a super cheap generic tablet that never get Android updates. nVidia Shield tablets are/were too expensive, and I already tried the Amazon Fire tablet "Google Play store" hack with bad long term results (works for a bit, then get slower and slower).
Nexus 7 was it, and Google killed it off after 2013.
Apple and Google have now managed to wallpaper the planet with tablets. They're everywhere... and their app stores and their movie stores etc... are everywhere.
Amazon seems to be the oddball. They actually took the Google platform and managed to figure out how to capitalize off of the Google platform while mostly cutting Google out. Everyone else is basically screwed.
So in the end, Samsung, HTC, all those guys are all going to die from Nokia/Blackberry syndrome. They don't make any money unless people buy new phones and tablets. The people have no reason to buy new phones because the one they have is supported well enough and performs well enough that there's no profit in buying a new one.
For me, there was no upgrade path available from the Samsung Galaxy Note pro 12.2 (OF 3 YEAR AGO!). There are faster tablets without stylus, there are tablets with more pixels but smaller screens, and there are bigger screen tablets with less processing power and fewer pixels.
There's no upgrade path that has all the existing features, plus faster processor, plus bigger screen. All the top end has been taken over by Windows10 2 in 1s.
Microsoft seems to have gotten its act together, Google seems to have lost their way. Samsung is neutral, they'll go with whoever delivers sales, so all their top end tablets are 2in1s running Windows. And the Android tablets are increasingly made down to a price, not up to a spec.
Their top end phone has more pixels than their top end tablet, and a faster processor than their top end Android tablet. That's how bad the Android tablets market is.
Everyone who is going to get one now has a tablet for simple media consumption tasks, and most tablets out there are fast enough to do the job (my kids are still using their years-old original Galaxy Tabs—which show no signs of quitting—to browse the web and do homework). The same malaise that infected the PC market has hit tablets—the only real target segment is upgraders, and most users don't see a reason to upgrade.
What's missing from the tablet experience continues to be the ability to effortlessly create content and manage multiple applications and files well. Tablet makers are loathe to have users deal with "files" on their machines, I realize, but for most workers and creators, work is done in files. My suspicion is that one way to drive a round of upgrades is to produce a fast, light tablet with long battery life that makes real work easier to accomplish on a tablet. It can be done now, but it feels cumbersome. You do it because you have to—the tablet is light and has a long battery life, so it's what you brought with you—but you're aware of the trade-offs.
Give me back better task/window management and the ability to work with and think in locally stored files (i.e. any application supporting a particular file format can load it if you have it, without the weird mix of apps that only support one or another cloud storage service) and I'd upgrade in a moment, because a tablet would finally be a laptop replacement.
Surface comes close, only the UI still isn't good enough and the battery life isn't there, and it's too "heavy" in general terms (not just weight). Some UI innovation with a less involved architecture (i.e. iPad hardware, but with UI innovation to enable laptop-like work more easily) and a whole bunch of laptop owners will get one to replace their laptops with something that's just as good but with much longer battery life and much lower weight.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
produced. And there has been nothing worthwhile since then. I had to replace my Tab S 8.4 with a recent-model iPad Mini due to work (needed particular apps that were iOS only) and I hate it, it feels like it's years behind.
I think the market is being misread. Apple is falling, yet everyone is still following Apple's lead (and moving away from very positive differentiation) as though Apple were still king. There devices were awesome in the '00s. Now they're stale—and rather than step into the gap, Android makers and Android itself have been working very hard to copy the staleness.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
it's late.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
it's propably due to most new tablets not being anything really better than the previous versions OR if they are, the price is almost twice as much as when the previous tablet released.. To me there just aren't any good midrange tablets, and most tablets which are pretty solid have been on the market already for 2 years..
Has been largely overblown it seems. People aren't just upgrading PCs less, they're upgrading EVERYTHING less.
Any Android tablet should be able to connect to a Bluetooth keyboard (just like any Android phone). I don't know about iOS but Android is by far the largest number of devices anyway.
Careful! Android lovers all hate bluetooth now that the headphone jack's been removed from the iPhone 7, and the hipsters all say they connect with bluetooth headsets.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
if that $699 tablet can have $40 rough-and-tumble stunt doubles in the house or minivan or tent, only the Chinese who were shrewd enough to make these low-power bargain-bin placemablets will call step 4. PROFIT!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I don't know if Apple tablets can do this but I'm sure they can: most Android tablets' USB port is really a USB-OTG port. You can connect a normal USB keyboard them just fine. I've built my own tiny keyboard for ergonomics, but it's also a great tablet keyboard.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I've been saying for years that tablets are a bubble waiting to pop. They don't "do" anything new, and worse, they can't do many things that computers can, and they're less productive than a computer at the things they CAN do. (see Data entry) They're an entertainment device, but mostly a novelty. If you're only target is mobile games... well, 99% of those are complete crap. You can't list on your two hands 12 mobile-only games that have changed the industry.
Nobody is developing new software on them (that is, a compiler/Visual Studio), so that means they're a target platform--not a replacement for computers. Nobody is doing CAD on a tablet. A touch screen is a horrible device to use for long lengths of time. There's no tactile feedback and using the 'keyboard' uses up your bloody screen space! Anyone who tried to play an adventure game on the iPod touch know what I'm talking about. You have to touch the screen to move around and now your hand is obscuring what's happening in the game.
Laptops will keep getting smaller and will have touch screens standard, and operating systems will eventually get better at being "dual purpose" (ala Windows 8/10 with their "tablet mode"). And then what will tablets offer anymore? The best games are on PC, and dedicated game systems with dedicated controllers. PHONES may make home consoles obsolete one day, but tablets? Absolutely not.
Joe Blow doesn't want to play Call of Duty with a touch screen, and he doesn't want to write use Office on one either. (Trust me, I've seen clients do that and the line workers absolutely HATE having to enter thousands of numbers into spreadsheets with no mouse and no keyboard.) And I haven't even mentioned the amount of carpal tunnel syndrome holding a crappy tablet in the air for hours on end (or pushing your hand against a flat surface instead of an ergonomic keyboard).
This I don't get, every other computing device has come down in price but top of the line Android tablets have increased in price. My Toshiba 10.1 cost $300 four years ago, today a name brand 10" tablet will cost $400-$500 and have less functionality. The Toshiba has a full sized SD card slot, try finding that on a tablet today.
The SD card slot is perfect for previewing photos in the field. Damn near every DSLR uses SD card storage, pop the card into the Toshiba and fire up Droid RAW and I can preview my photos on a decent 10"screen instead of the tiny built in screen on the camera.
As if typing on a physical keyboard (wired or not) is in any way analogous to headphone listening (wired or not).
Welcome to the land of whoosh!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
iPads, and even iPhones, can connect to Bluetooth keyboards and use them just fine.
But not a mouse (on Android it works fine).