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Tablet Shipments Decline For 13th Straight Quarter (venturebeat.com)
The tablet market has now declined year-over-year for 13 quarters straight. From a report: Q4 2017 saw a 7.9 percent year-over-year decline: 49.6 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 53.8 million units in the same quarter last year. The only silver lining is that declines for 2017 haven't been in the double-digits, like they were in 2016.
Oh, that thing I have to use for anything more complicated than watching Youtube videos.
I remember when tablets started getting popular I thought they were just a fad.
I think they lasted long enough to not be considered a fad, but I think the basic problem remains. They're not as convenient as a phone and they're not as usable as a laptop. Sure, helps if you have a keyboard case... but still a laptop will always do more. I think there will always be a demographic that likes tablets (children for one)... they're just not as useful for most things. They will have their niche.
A tablet is after all just a clunky phone or a crippled laptop.
How many people bought a tablet expecting to do great things with it and after a month or so barely used it, instead preferring their phone (or laptop)? I imagine most tablet buyers (at least that's how most people I know who have a tablet operated).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If so, then what is the use case which is driving you to update it? What's that? Nothing?
The thing with a tablet is it is stripped down to wifi and web connectivity. If you own one, what do you need a new one for?
The problem is that modern companies and the stock market seem to think you're going to grow 10-15% .. every year .. forever, Since that is irrational and impossible, you have to accept that at a certain point the sale of products will plateau and likely drop off.
So, it seems like very 6-12 months for the last bunch of years we decry that desktops/laptops/phones/tablets/widgets have declines in their sales. Of course they've fucking declined, everybody has one and there is no compelling reason to buy another one.
It's terrible that corporations and the stock market are driven by irrational morons who think you can grow at a linear rate forever. It really is too bad that reality doesn't factor into growth projections.
But at the end of the day, the answer to all of these things comes down to the same basic answer: compared to when nobody had one and everyone wanted one, far more people have them, far fewer people find themselves needing/wanting a new one, and far fewer of them will be sold. The market for these things hasn't died, but we're now at a sustaining level of ownership instead of a growing level. And the ones people already have still work, or get handed down -- which means you're never going to sell the same amount as when nobody had one.
With luck, consumers as a group start to ask themselves the question "do I need this, or is this just more stuff they need me to buy to make their bottom line?" Me, I think it's about time we stopped all being told we need to buy something and rushing out and buying it.
Because then maybe the idiotic corporations and the moronic stock market will stop living in a fantasy world where they actually have to take into account market saturation and realistic limitations on growth. Right now, so much of the stock market is predicated on wishful thinking and fantasy, and that's never a good sign.
I remember when tablets started getting popular I thought they were just a fad.
Really? It seemed clear enough to me right away that they were going to be a strong market segment for a long time.
I think they lasted long enough to not be considered a fad, but I think the basic problem remains. They're not as convenient as a phone and they're not as usable as a laptop.
That depends entirely on what you are doing. A tablet is most useful for things where you might have used a clipboard or binder for previously. Think stuff like doctor's offices using them in patient rooms to record data. A phone doesn't have enough screen size and a laptop is too cumbersome. Tablets hit a nice form factor for tasks like that.
They also are nice for people who don't need all the bells and whistles of a laptop but for whom a phone is too small. My grandmother uses an iPad to do various tasks. She can't handle the complexity of a laptop and a phone is too small for her to see or use efficiently. The young and the elderly as well as the (ahem) technologically impaired tend to fall into this category.
A lot of sales people that come to my office these days use tablets and it's a good fit. A laptop is overkill and presents the company a needless administrative burden (read $$$) and security risk.
Short version is that there are a ton of non-trivial use cases where tablets are the best option.
A tablet is after all just a clunky phone or a crippled laptop.
Only if you are using it wrong. It's all about the use case. There are things you can do on a tablet that are awkward to impossible on a phone because of the screen size difference. There are tasks where using a mouse/keyboard is inefficient or unnecessary. Sometimes people don't need the extra complexity of a full blown PC because they are just doing some light web browsing or email or watching some videos.