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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 the days when ./ headlines told me the PC was on the way out as tablets were the new thing to replace them. I remember getting modded as a Troll when I posted that PCs weren't going anywhere because tablets were a solution in search of a problem. Those were the days.
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.
What are they qualifying as a tablet? I didn't see any mention of the Microsoft Surface line so I'm assuming Android/iPad. One of the reasons for the decline is Windows tablets are getting good enough to replace traditional laptops negating the need for a laptop for work and an additional tablet for lighter activities. I suspect Chromebooks are also eroding the tablet space at the low end for those who need a keyboard. I have stopped using all my tablets since acquiring a 10" Windows tablet a few years ago. I was shocked (not really) when Apple finally released the iPad Pro and gimped it with iOS.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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.
That is exactly the problem.
My last tablet broke, and I am looking for a replacement: HiDPI screen, 9" or 10", light enough to hold, contemporary amount of RAM (4GB or more).
And where are all those tablets? There is the obscenely expensive Pixel C has been discontinued., and the only slightly less expensive Galaxy Tab S3 does not provide a proper Android experience. Amazon also discontinued the HDX, which never provided a great Android experience. Only cheap Android tablets are left on the market.
I'm sure there's a bunch of reasons that tablet sales have been declining in recent years. Here's some of the ones I can think of:
* A tablet with a decent spec can be pricey (not as mad as the high-end phone market though!).
* There's been a move away from widescreen to 4:3 with Android tablets for absolutely no good reason (don't quote the iPad to me - that's got it wrong all these years!). Since a tablet is primarily a media consumption device, the aspect ratio has to be close to common video aspect ratios (so 16:9 and 16:10 are fine, 4:3 most definitely is not). It's put me (and I suspect many others) right off buying recent tablets.
* People don't have SIM contracts with tablets as a rule, so they don't need to go into that "replace every 1-2 years" cycle that contracrts tend to suck you into.
I've got a Nexus 7 and 10, but refused to buy the Nexus 9 (too expensive, 4:3). I've got a Samsung S 8.4" and 10.5", but refused to buy *any* of the S2 or S3 variants (again, too expensive, 4:3). Eventually found a 10" tablet released last year that a) was cheap (under $250), b) had decent specs and c) was 16:10. It's the Teclast T10 - had to be bought from a Chinese site, but it's a sweet tablet for the price.
The currently available tablets have pretty well plateaued (if not regressed in some cases!) in terms of specs and prices - it's no wonder people are hanging onto their existing tablets for longer. As for some posters dissing tablets - I *much* prefer to use a 10" tablet screen than one half the diagonal on a phone. Just the onscreen keyboard alone is so much better on a tablet, never mind reading Web sites or watching videos.
It went down by the amount that tablets went up. When that stopped, it stopped too.
The truly fucked-up thing is, that to the economists, everything that looks like a stable healthy balance ... the thing that means the ideal state long-term survival in nature ... is called "stagnation" and considered a "bad" thing and the first step to "recession" (which is considered a catastrophe). While exponential growth ... the thing that, by definition, cannot be sustained indefinitely, and is only found things that guarantee death, like pathogens and literal explosions ... is considered the must-have normal/ideal state.
ONLY a "stagnating" market is surviving one.
Wait...
This is not that kind of tablets, isn't it?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I used tablets until my phone eventually replaced it. My LG V30 is big enough that it's just not worthwhile to use a 7" tablet too and my laptop is now light enough that I have no use for a 10 inch or bigger one either. Tablets will survive for those that feel 7-10 inch devices are their sweet spot device but that market will be a lot smaller now.
I'd buy another. I remember buying the 2012 Nexus 7 for around $300 CDN thinking I wasn't sure what I'd use it for but it would be neat to have an Android device. Maybe use it for books. I ended up using that tablet nonstop on commutes, reading, watching videos and a ton of other activities. I had no idea how useful a tablet that size could be. Then 18 months later the 2013 Nexus was out and even better. I sold my 2012 Nexus to a coworker and bought the 2013 version - also for around $300, less then $175 I got selling the 2012 version made it a decently affordable upgrade.
The 2013 Nexus was great and worked well. I'd thought I'd do another sell/upgrade with the next Nexus to come out, but that wasn't to be. The new Nexus - the Nexus 9 when it came out was over $500 CDN and considerably larger. I wanted a pocket tablet, not that monstrosity. So I looked around and saw nothing compelling. There were some 7" - 8" Samsung tablets and other Asus tablets but their spec was hardly better than (or in some cases worse) than the 2013 Nexus I already had and their prices were more than what I paid for the Nexus so I stuck with that.
Eventually in early 2017 the flip sensor in the Nexus 2013 went on me and I had to flip orientation with an app. Annoying but not the end of the world. But it also made me look around for another tablet after another couple of years and to my surprise there *still* wasn't anything on the market that would replace the 2013 Nexus at anywhere close to a similar price point. Practically everything in the sub $300 CDN price range was STILL no better than the Nexus 7 and usually also had 16GB of storage to boot (compared to the Nexus 7's 32GB). I ended up getting an LG G pad III 8.0 because the phone carrier I am with has a "dollars" credit that accumulates and at the time they were planning on ending the program and said you needed to spend your dollars with them. I had no interest in a new phone or (another) case but they had the 8" LG G Pad III for $240 and with the credit I had I ended up getting it for $50 out of pocket. I've been using it now for about 6 months and while it has more oomph than the old Nexus by about 20%, and a brighter screen, it also is hampered by only having 16GB of storage. I have a MicroSD card in it but it still wants to run all apps off internal storage so that's always tight and causes issues.
The problems with the G Pad have had me looking around again, and there's just not much out there other than the Asus Zenpad lines but again, the price isn't commensurate with what it should be for the incremental bump in spec. So unless specs get a boost or prices get a chop I'm sticking with what I have.