
Are tablets falling out of favour? - yawz
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31626055
======
pcthrowaway
I think the thing people are missing is that tablets tend to get replaced less
than smartphones. They're less likely to get broken, lost, or stolen due to
the fact that we aren't as careless with them as phones, in part because
they're bigger, in part because they're useless for drunk texting, and in part
because we take our phones with us _everywhere_ and kind of forget it's not
literally attached to us.

While much of the demand for new smartphones is without doubt driven by the
perpetual improvements, much of it is also driven by theft/loss/breakage. A
tablet from 3 years ago serves much of the same purpose as a tablet today, so
is less likely to get replaced. There may very well be as many working tablets
in circulation as smartphones.

~~~
soylentcola
Yep. It's just one data point but I picked up an iPad 2 when they first came
out since I was going to be taking a fairly long trip around southeast Asia
(from the US) and I couldn't see myself toting my laptop across all of those
flights and several towns/cities. It wasn't a cheap purchase and it was
definitely a bit of a luxury since I already owned a desktop, a laptop, and a
smart phone.

Since then it's become pretty slow and a bit scuffed up with age (and even has
a crack in one corner of the glass) but I can still use it as an ebook reader
and to try out iOS-only apps as it's my only iOS device. For everything else,
my other devices are more suitable. Phone is faster and more portable. Laptop
is more powerful for more demanding mobile computing. Desktop is more capable
still for media production and gaming. The tablet remains an "also ran" in my
lineup. It still gets some use but not enough that I'm gonna shell out another
$250-750 on a new tablet anytime soon.

------
rdtsc
They looked cool. Everyone thought they'd have so much fun owning one. I mean,
just look at all those young happy people in the commericals jumping up and
down with their new Surface/iPad. So they got them.

Realized they are just oversized smart phones that can't make cell phone
calls, can't be held easily with one hand, but can't be used for creating
content like a laptop, or typing emails, and they look silly when used for
taking pictures.

Eventually they end up on the nightstand, and used for reading news and
looking at pictures in bed at night, before falling asleep or given to kids as
babysitting devices.

~~~
MichaelGG
With 6" phones with great batteries, I just didn't have any more of a tablet
use case. I'd have loved to have a Nexus 7 phone, but Google send intent on
blocking that. So a Chinese 6" Android and it handles a surprising number if
scenarios. I just wish it were another inch bigger.

~~~
sliverstorm
A Nexus 7 phone? I'm holding a Nexus 7 tablet right now. This is _way_ to big
for a phone. It _just_ fits into my cargo pants leg pockets.

Although, if you really want one that bad, get a Nexus 7 tablet with data, and
run a VoIP number on it.

~~~
maxerickson
ASUS has several of them:

[http://www.asus.com/Phones/PadFone_Products/](http://www.asus.com/Phones/PadFone_Products/)

~~~
maxerickson
Should be this link:
[http://www.asus.com/Phones/Fonepad_Products/](http://www.asus.com/Phones/Fonepad_Products/)

------
Animats
What's falling is the price of tablets. They're below $50 now on Amazon, with
a 1-year warranty.[1] Low-end tablets are already starting to replace
restaurant menus and TV remotes.

Phones are personal devices. Tablets are more place-oriented; they'll be in
office conference rooms, hotel rooms, and restaurants for whomever needs to
use them. They'll be too cheap to steal, and tied to a local WiFi key so
they're useless elsewhere.

The main problem is keeping them charged. Phones have individual humans slaved
to them to tend to their needs, but place-oriented tablets do not. The
wireless charging industry needs to get their act together, unify their three
competing standards (Qi, Powermat, and A4WP), and get a charging unit into
every business hotel room and airline tray table, then start on conference
room tables.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N369KKY](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N369KKY)

~~~
walterbell
What do you think of the Jolla/Sailfish tablet? It raised almost 5X of their
target and pre-order demand has been so strong that they reopened the
crowdfunding campaign. Sailfish is a descendant of Nokia Maemo/Meego, with
Android compatibility.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-
firs...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-
crowdsourced-tablet)

~~~
davegardner
Strong demand for a crowdfunding campaign perhaps. However it's really a drop
in the ocean if you compare their 18k funders to the estimated 259 million
tablets that'll be sold in 2016.

Edit: I jumped a year ahead. A better comparison would be to the 233.4 million
that are estimated for 2015.

~~~
walterbell
It's indeed a mere droplet among total tablet sales. But given the obscurity
of Jolla, it's surprisingly strong demand for _something_ not being provided
by other tablets. This could mean that slowing demand may due to current
tablets, not the tablet market itself.

~~~
pavlov
Jolla's tablet has 18,000 funders.

If we assume that there are at least 2 million Linux enthusiasts in the world,
10% of them have heard of Jolla, and 10% of those are willing to spend
disposable income on a new kind of Linux device... That gives you a market of
20k people.

So I'm not convinced that Jolla really offers anything compelling to anyone
else except a subset of Linux fans.

~~~
walterbell
Their top feature being promoted is "privacy". That's a property of their
business model rather than technology, one which could be of interest to more
than a subset of Linux fans. Time will tell if Jolla can keep Linux invisible
to users.

~~~
Animats
It's not clear that "privacy" and "Google Android" are compatible, unless you
go to Cyanogen and dump all Google services.

~~~
walterbell
In theory, Sailfish could sandbox/isolate native app data from the
compatibility layer which runs Android apps. Whether they will expose a
sufficiently granular policy/management API is an open question.

------
Fomite
I think the overall failure, one that will be familiar to ecologists, is that
things with a logistic growth curve look very much like exponentially growing
things for quite some time - and then hit a wall.

If you build your expectations based on that exponential bit, and then you hit
market saturation/carrying capacity, well, you get exactly the narrative
currently surrounding tablets.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
I used to do ecological modeling. So many theories and models break down once
you put logistic constraints. I suspect that even with this current trend of
"big data", we will hit limits of what is storable.

------
rebootthesystem
Lightweight web browsing in bed. Check.

Play a couple of games on the couch. Check.

Read an occasional eBook. Check.

Read HN and do my best to avoid typing on the awkward beast. Check.

Hand it to a guest who needs to check webmail. Check.

Not caring about it any more. Check.

Writing web apps instead of native apps because you have all the control.
Check.

Not having to deal with the App Store. Check.

Having a real computer on my desk to actually get shit done. Priceless.

For everything else there's MasterCard.

~~~
zghst
Lets not kid ourselves about Web apps. We get control, but working with JS,
limited APIs as well as rewriting everything that an OS would provide in God
knows what ever framework of the day is horrific. As someone who splits time
between .NET, iOS + OS X and JS, I weep every time I have to touch JS.

An app store is actually a really good way to curate content. Sure we always
hear about the 15% of devs who have issues with it, but for the other 85%,
they are doing just fine. It's more good than bad.

~~~
CmonDev
_" We get control..."_

Which control? I can't even pick a different non-legacy language without crap-
trans-pilation.

------
cyberjunkie
Tablets are going to be consumption devices. I think mobile phones are seeing
the same sort of stagnancy as PCs/laptops did a few years back. We no longer
want faster hardware as we did say, 7-10 years back on a laptop. Mobiles have
gotten to being pretty fast but there's nothing extraordinary happening there.
Large screen, better resolution, faster processors, fine. We wanted that from
PCs and laptops, and they've become that. Improved batteries and cooler phones
will be an improvement, but they will not be a game changer. Tablets are
seeing the same trend.

I think the big game changing, market capturing products will be smartwatches,
VR glasses, electric cars, practical (faster, affordable, standardized) 3D
printers and anything else that I've missed out. We're craving to see
something completely different and experience them at least once, even if they
fail so we're waiting for the right products.

------
Puts
I think tablets would be great for specific tasks. Police could make reports
in the field, picking and checking off orders in a warehouse or a waiter could
take orders on it. But as it is now, both Apples and Googles ecosystem are so
tightly coupled with the owner of the device, it's hard to use them in an
shared environment.

And also as they function as multipurpose devices, the user have so many ways
of screwing things up.

There should be a manufacturer of generic tablets that are made to boot right
into a single purpose application. There would be countless appliances for
such a device!

~~~
pjc50
_or a waiter could take orders on it_

Our company does exactly this: [http://www.zonal.co.uk/news/2013/07/23/zonal-
launches-iserve...](http://www.zonal.co.uk/news/2013/07/23/zonal-launches-
iserve-the-till-in-your-pocket/) although with restaurant-owned devices.

~~~
collyw
What advantage does it give over pen and paper?

I can see a number of downsides - expense, the need to keep it charged,
possible crashes....

~~~
pjc50
It's a till. With the pen and paper system, you eventually need to key it in
to the till anyway, so why not bring the till with you? If you have one of
these: [http://www.verifone.com/products/hardware/mobile/payware-
mob...](http://www.verifone.com/products/hardware/mobile/payware-mobile-e315/)
you can take payments on it as well.

It also sends the order through to the kitchen immediately, so the waiter is
now free to serve other customers rather than going back and forth to the
kitchen. A small time saving, but everything adds up if you're busy.

Once an order is in the system, it can be retrieved by any staff or manager
from any till or handheld.

It's targeted more at the chain restaurant where the till is the tip of a
large reporting and logistics iceberg, rather than mom-and-pop small
restaurants.

------
jasonlotito
Most likely reason is the same reason I haven't bought a new tablet for some
time: tablets have a longer life span. The things it could do several years
ago are the same things I'm having it do now. Nothing has changed. So why
spend money on a new tablet that will be used for something my existing tablet
does now?

Are they falling out of favor, or do people just not need to buy a new one
every year or two?

------
goalieca
I use a tablet every day for half an hour. My biggest use case is for reading
magazines, blogs, sites, news, etc while i eat breakfast or while i sit on the
couch.

~~~
yawz
This is very similar to how I use my tablet. I don't do that every day as a
routine, though, as I'm in front of a computer all day.

Tablets are "cool" but I think we're still discovering how we really use them
and this is not necessarily in the same way that the advertisement or the
salespeople describe.

------
bitwize
The problem is that outside of certain niche uses, tablets objectively blow
goats. No one really likes poking at a touch screen for serious work,
especially for typing stuff in; for that the keyboard and pointer have served
us well and will continue to. If the tablet is to survive as a general purpose
device it will be as thr CPU/display component of a more complete computer
system, which can be plugged into, or wirelessly pair with, the other
peripherals in a console or laptop form factor. I think Asus had the right
idea with their Transformer line and if you take something like that and put a
regular OS on it, you have a compelling portable device.

~~~
paulornothing
I don't know if I'd call them niche. They cover the basis of what most people
do outside of work. Texting, browsing, watching videos and playing games.
Granted I do not currently own one because I do not consume much content
outside of going through Flipboard every day. However I will buy an iPad
because I can access my virtual desktop and I'll just use a bluetooth keyboard
and trackpad and utilize it just like my desktop at work.

------
InclinedPlane
No, they're in a transitional period.

Stage 1 after the iPad came out was a boom of epic proportions. This was great
in some ways because it helped finance the development of new hardware
technologies, especially in regards to mobile cpus, batteries, and high
resolution screens. But there's a dark side to this boom. It was actually too
easy to make a huge profit, which led to laziness and a lack of true
innovation. Thinner/lighter/higher-res/faster is great but that's only half,
at best, of the end user experience. Tablets more or less languished as little
more than what they started out as: glorified content consumption devices.

But tablets and the general "space" around the tablet idea have so much
greater potential than the iPad-like experience we've mostly had so far. But
because there wasn't much pressure to do more, and money was still raining
from the sky, that sort of thing hasn't been much explored. As the tablet
market experiences hardship and contraction we'll see that innovation come
forward (because it'll be the best way to make the most money in that market)
and we'll see a renaissance in tablets over the next couple of years (I hope).

------
danjayh
I don't understand why tablets haven't grown. Here we are 5 years after the
release of the original ipad, and they're still mostly 10" or smaller. With
phones now encroaching on tablet screen sizes, I think it's time for someone
to trot out and ultra-thin/light 14" or 15" tablet. Sure, it sounds crazy, but
then so did a phone with a 5" screen when the original Note came out. For
tablets to really take off, I think they need to define a category that sets
them apart from phones - and to me, that means bigger screens, _real_
multitasking, and increased potential for productivity. Everybody says that
tablets are going to destroy the laptop market. That may be the case, but
first I think that they need to be able to actually function as decent laptops
replacements. So there are both hardware (screen size, input, thickness, and
weight) and software problems to crack.

That being said, I think that the case for a tablet over a laptop of similar
size/weight is a pretty tough sell, and long-term, convertibles will reign
supreme ... and so, my final conclusion from this is that even though I rather
dislike the 'tablet' interface baked into Windows 8, once the appropriate
hardware exists to support it, I think that Microsoft's concept of a
convertible OS is actually a pretty solid one ... although I firmly believe
that the UI for 'desktop mode' cannot be the same as the UI for 'tablet mode',
even though combining them seems to be Microsoft's ultimate goal. I think that
a better goal would be an application framework that allows a single
application to shift between modes, without losing state, without restarting.
I am looking forward to the day that somebody solves both the hardware and
software problems in a single machine.

~~~
13
Big screens are expensive and make your arms fatigued.

~~~
ObviousScience
I'd pay even more than Microsoft's already absurd Surface Pro prices if they
made a 15" version.

~~~
pjc50
Why? That's a 15" laptop with a massive touchscreen.

------
hashberry
My tablet has been replaced by my Chromebook for everyday usage. I like my
keyboard and not having to "set up" the screen for viewing. With a tablet you
have to hold it in your hands or get a fancy case or prop it up against
something. And I cannot escape my love for the tactile keyboard! Does anyone
actually enjoy writing and editing emails or comments on a tablet versus a
keyboard?

~~~
Xixi
Touchscreens have one big win over keyboards: they can work with any language.
Never great, but always better than the wrong keyboard. For instance I'm
currently writing on a Japanese keyboard: I cannot write in French with it
because I cannot input accents in an acceptable manner.

I could get away with either an American or a French keyboard, but I have none
at hand (well, technically there is one, but an accident involving a cup of
coffee makes it only useful to write text without the letters 'u', 'i', 'o'
and 'p'). So when I need to write French I write it on my iPhone and email it
to myself, then copy-paste...

Pretty niche use-case, I admit.

------
coralreef
I still love my iPad 2. I read flipboard, ibooks and kindle on it in bed. That
said, its still an iPad 2, I don't need to upgrade it for 4-5 years (which
makes me due for an upgrade soon).

I'd be more interested in a bigger iPad Pro if it could retain the design and
lightness of the iPad air.

------
transfire
Give me a break. In ten years everyone is going to have a tablet on every
table. Once they become available in large formats, super thin and semi-
flexible with great battery life, and at a cost anyone can afford, paper will
have finally met its match. Maybe then we can talk about a slow down in the
market. The current dip is just a typical market ebb.

~~~
radley
Ten years? I have 4 around my apartment already. Who cares about battery life
- most already have wireless charging stands (not the iPad).

------
bsder
How about "market is saturated"?

I suspect that everybody who wants a tablet now has one. So, your new sales
are only replacement level.

~~~
Xixi
I've noticed this too, most iPad owners I know simply do not renew it, because
they don't need the extra power. I've updated an iPad 2 because its screen is
cracked, but I still use it from time to time. The iPad Air 2 is of course
much faster, the screen is much better, and it's lighter; but for casual
browsing the iPad 2 is still mostly good enough.

------
chubs
If you look at the App store market, there have been no killer apps for the
ipad for a long while. I mean, when was the last app as awesome as Paper by
53? The inability to make a living from the App Store has put the development
of killer apps to a halt. And on android, since there's less distinction
between tablet and phone apps as there is on ios, there's very few tablet-only
apps, so nothing really takes full advantage of the interactivity that is
possible on a bigger screen. Last nail in the coffin is ever-bigger phones.
I'm an ios developer by day, and i'm seeing less interest in ipad apps by
clients. Most are now happy to simply scale up the phone version.

~~~
zghst
I'm still not convinced on a bigger phone eating the iPad's lunch. The canvas
on iPad has awesome potential, maybe one day someone will take advantage of
it.

~~~
chubs
You're right, it has awesome potential, and said potential has been realised
in the past with apps such as Paper and Cook. But due to the race to the
bottom in app prices, nobody can make a living out of the App Store any more
(besides cheesy games) and thus we're seeing very few great apps any more.

------
unabridged
I have a tablet and I haven't used it since I got a chromebook. It's light,
cheap, and the keyboard makes a good stand. Plus I can switch between linux
easily and its got a x86-64 which means I can run any programs I want.

------
gurkendoktor
As the article says, there is little reason to ever replace tablets. Consider
that Apple is still selling the first-gen iPad mini, which is on par with the
iPad 2 from 2011! And if someone bought an Android tablet in 2011, it probably
still makes for a good mobile movie player.

> Not long ago, we were assured the iPad and its ilk were destined to dominate
> our everyday lives.

I find it really hard to estimate how much people _do_ use tablets since most
tablets (I assume) only have Wi-Fi and are left at home. All we have as a
proxy are sales numbers and web statistics. My iPad certainly has its spot in
my everyday life.

------
yodsanklai
I've always found them to be almost totally redondant with my laptop. They're
barely less cumbersome than a small laptop, and don't offer new
functionalities. In some occasions, they may be slightly more convenient than
a laptop, but they can't replace it for very long. And it's an additional
device to take care of (charging, syncing, updating and so on...). It may
sound extreme, but honestly I think that even if there were free, I'm not sure
I would have one as it would mainly be extra clutter.

------
vacri
It's weird that most of the comments are about whether tablets are useful or
not, rather than tablets simply starting to saturate the market for them. For
example, everyone (rhetorical everyone) needs a phone, but not every member of
the family needs a tablet. Or that it's useful for a tradesperson to wear a
phone while working, but not a tablet. Tablets were never going to be as
widespread as phones.

------
walterbell
Many people used Blackberries as content creation devices, even when they were
hampered by restrictive carrier policy. What excuse do tablet manufacturers
have for creating restricted-use devices? It's not like tablet OEMs make money
from media companies that mandate consumption-only use cases.

------
gambiting
"The iPhone 6 Plus is two-thirds of the height of the iPad Mini 3 and has a
higher resolution screen." \- well, that's simply not true, no? Ip6 Plus has a
FullHD screen, while the iPad Mini 3 has a Retina Screen(2048×1536 px).

~~~
rsynnott
They might mean higher pixel density. It's certainly not higher resolution.

------
dougabug
Blame the short-sighted greed of Verizon and AT&T, for jacking up the price of
wireless data beyond reason after Steve Jobs died. My iPhone is essential
while my iPad is "nice to have" because my iPhone is always connected and
always has a high speed, unlimited data connection to the Internet. I pay full
price for iPhone upgrades to keep my unlimited data plan (although each time
it reminds me how dearly I'd love to ditch Verizon forever). My iPhone goes
everywhere with me, but my iPad typically stays at home because of its lack of
wireless. I will never buy a metered data plan, nor does it seem reasonable to
me to pay separately for an extra device, which is functionally for me just a
bigger screen. If my iPad had always on, unlimited wireless broadband, I'd
take it with me almost everywhere, too.

~~~
MichaelGG
If that were true, then other countries might see more use, as they seem to
have more sane options. But even in the US, you can walk into a grocery store
and get a SIM with "unlimited" (3GB at real speed) for $50 a month. Maybe less
for data only. I'm trying NET10 now and they seem fine. And I see adverts
everywhere talking about shared plans. Maybe your problem is looking at
Verizon, which is notoriously hostile.

~~~
dougabug
Clearly, Verizon and AT&T (I've had both) are the problem. For various
reasons, alternative carriers are not yet competitive at scale.

I have zero interest in a metered, shared data plan. Throttled to 3GB monthly
for me is not unmetered.

~~~
maxerickson
Isn't cost the real problem?

There's lots of purposes where $1 per gigabyte would be great.

~~~
dougabug
Ultimately cost is always at least part of the problem. You want to compare a
niche, point solution to a general solution (always connected, first option
for mobile everything).

People are wondering why iPad sales have seemingly topped out, while iPhone
sales are soaring. Like it's inexplicable magic or beyond the limits of
comprehension.

The iPhone delivers greater value at a lower cost. Whoa. Crazy.

The wireless carrier business is nearly a duopoly in the US, and both are
essentially legacy businesses whose pricing models are inconsistent with
modern Internet usage. Once a viable modern carrier at scale enters the market
(think wireless analog of Google Fiber, deployed everywhere), I'm done with
AT&T and Verizon forever.

~~~
maxerickson
Wireless data prices are too high to interest me, and I'm sure they are much
higher than the incremental costs the carriers have, but I don't think it is
obvious that they can offer real unlimited data for reasonable fees.

------
Singletoned
It immediately made me think of this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

------
zghst
Honestly, I think that the iPad people will want (full-size, latest) is too
expensive and that Android tablets are nowhere as near good as the iPad. There
is more than enough time for all of us to split into X amount of devices. I
sat down with a fresh iPad today, and I have to say it is incredibly well
done. Apple put their heart and soul into it to create a superb experience.

I still believe mobile devices are the future. In the future most people will
not have a traditional computer. And by most people, I don't mean wealthy,
white and western, I mean most human beings, it is probably a true statement
today, it will be even truer tomorrow.

------
parfe
The only people I see using tablets are older. Everyone I know without reading
glasses uses their cell phones instead. Guess I'll age into a tablet but if I
need a device too large for my pocket I'm bringing a laptop. All those blogs
from three years ago proclaimed a tablet based productivity revolution that
never materialized from my perspective. Tablets are just another consumption
display for AARP members.

