
Tablet shipments decline 10.1% in 2015 - prostoalex
http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/01/idc-tablet-shipments-decline-10-1-in-2015-leaders-apple-and-samsung-both-lose-market-share/
======
dspillett
This shouldn't be a massive surprise: it is pretty obvious the market hit
saturation point where most people who want/need tablet have at least one. The
remaining sales are upgrades, replacements due to damage/loss, people buying
second/third ones (maybe getting a 7" or 8" as the 10+" is to big to take
everywhere in a pocket, or a 10+" because while the 7" is practical carrying-
wise a bigger screen is required) and just the occasional fresh person joining
the ownership club. With upgrades being the biggest chunk of sales ATM and
there not being much revolutionary coming out I'm not surprised sales overall
have slumped over the period.

The article doesn't say whether they included phones or hybrids in those
figures. Larger phones are replacing small tablet purchases for many (why
carry a 7" tablet when you've got a 6" phone screen everywhere you go
already?). It does explicitly count hybrids though which some articles I've
seen don't, so the decline isn't being exaggerated by people switching from
just tablet (or tablet plus bluetooth keyboard) to a hybrid laptop/tablet
device.

~~~
creshal
> This shouldn't be a massive surprise

Except for the "economics" "institutes" which extrapolated the first-year
sales onto the next 20 years and were adamant that tablets would soon™ replace
desktop, laptops, phones, cats, and, finally, hydrogen atoms in the sun,
because somehow "infinite growth" and "crash" are the only possible business
models.

Same crap as with the netbook "boom" that was supposed to revolutionize
EVERYTHING!!1 for about a year.

~~~
crdoconnor
The netbook boom was nipped in the bud by Microsoft licensing. They gave away
a free version of windows on it with heavy restrictions. Consequently hardware
manufacturers brought out new models but stopped improving them (they topped
out at a measly 1GB of RAM, upgradeable to 2).

They quickly died out because of course they did. That's a ridiculous
restriction.

After my old one died I scoured for ages trying to find one that didn't adhere
to those ridiculous restrictions to no avail. There were ~35 models available
with a 2GB RAM restriction and zero without. The next year there were none.

~~~
nostrademons
I'd argue that the netbook boom was nipped in the bud by the introduction of
the tablet. Netbooks, tablets, low-end laptops, and phablets that are too big
to fit in a pocket are all the same market. They serve a person who wants to
browse the web, check e-mail, instant-message, take notes, and do other
information consumption tasks with a device that is small enough to carry
around in a handbag or backpack but too large to fit in a pocket.

I suspect that the decline in tablet sales comes from category confusion at
the edges of this market. At the low end, people are buying phablets to stick
in a handbag instead of 7" tablets. At the high end, some people have gone
back to lightweight laptops like the Macbook Air, Microsoft Surface, or
equivalents. The "market" \- defined as the group of people with similar needs
- continues to grow, but a growing percentage of people are picking products
from a different category to satisfy it, as more such products become
available.

~~~
zanny
And now Chromebooks are eating some of the tablet market, and are absolutely
replacements for the original netbooks, and are the most popular form factor
of new notebook sales now.

------
BuckRogers
I think my own personal anecdote is indicative of the majority's experience.
It's telling how long ago all the personal electronics in my house were
acquired:

2009- My personal PC. Used heavily and daily, 3 monitors, 2 mice, gaming and
development.

2011- iPhone4S, wife's phone still in use today.

2011- Nook Simple Touch.

2013- Dell Haswell i5, wife's laptop.

2015- My phone is an iPhone5S. I love this phone. I was on an upgrade
treadmill for the last 5 years though with Android. Having gone through 3
phones in that time. Each with the hope I was getting the 'iPhone' of the
Android world and never found it (ended on the Samsung GS3 on Cyanogenmod).
Including the infamous HTC Thunderbolt. HTC found a good way to get people to
replace their device..

The only thing I intend to replace on this list before it breaks is my
personal machine built in 2009. That only for VR (something like this with a
video card from this summer's selection
[http://pcpartpicker.com/p/m2gN3C](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/m2gN3C)), which
may put me on a replacement treadmill again.

If I don't buy a VR headset this year, I'll probably stick with Intel NUCs,
particularly Skull Canyon with Iris Pro for the foreseeable future. That may
also put me back to more frequent upgrades since the GPU is limited enough to
warrant a new NUC in a year or two.

I'm fairly into my devices and there's really little hook IMO for most people
to replace anything. Maybe if one has a strong desire for "latest and
greatest" but I don't unless I need it. Unless you're on some sort of higher
powered gaming treadmill and even then I've been using one from 2009 to this
day. Granted, it was born with a $600 Intel 160GB X25-M SSD among other pretty
good items that held the test of time.

In Apple's case, they have incentive to have a device last as long as our 4S
as the business model is predicated on the AppStore ultimately. Not many
businesses are as vertically integrated though so it's a problem when sales
decline ~10% for everyone else.

~~~
nemothekid
> _they have incentive to have a device last as long as our 4S as the business
> model is predicated on the AppStore ultimately_

The incentive your touting doesn't really match reality. At the start of 2015,
Apple made $7.5B in revenue from the App Store cumulatively ($3B in 2014).
Apple made $10B from the iPhone in Q1 2011, and has only been growing from
there.

The AppStore, like Apple's many other software departments, contributes a
fraction of what the high-margin hardware business brings in.

[https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/01/08App-Store-
Rings-i...](https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/01/08App-Store-Rings-
in-2015-with-New-Records.html)
[http://www.statista.com/statistics/263402/apples-iphone-
reve...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/263402/apples-iphone-revenue-
since-3rd-quarter-2007/)

~~~
BuckRogers
That's irrelevant to the point made. The incentive existing and being stronger
for some more than others, is entirely unrelated to the actual profits brought
in currently.

It's a longterm plan, and I believe good for the environment and consumer.

~~~
hollerith
So, you concede grandparent's point that Apple's revenue from (smartphone plus
tablet) hardware sales is and always has been at least 10 and probably 20
times as much as revenue from the (smartphone and tablet) App Store, but you
won't retract your statement that Apple has "an incentive for [their hardware]
to last" a long time "as the business model is predicated on the AppStore
ultimately"?

Can you point to _any_ statement by a leader at or spokesperson for Apple that
suggests that that is Apple's long-term plan?

Apple's cost for manufacturing and delivering to a customer a new iPad or
iPhone (and providing post-sale support and warranty service) is only 60 or
70% of the selling price of that iPad or iPhone -- the rest is pure profit for
Apple (provided they would have been profitable without that one additional
sale -- provided, that is, that revenue is enough to cover the "fixed" costs
such as design and engineering). If their "marginal" cost were 99% of the
selling price, then it might be different, but the way it is now, surely the
more iPads and iPhones Apple sells, the more profit they make. And since that
is the case, in what sense does Apple have an "incentive" to make it so that
any customer replaces his iPad or iPhone less often?

~~~
BuckRogers
I disagree with the premise that it's a point at all. Certain hardware is hot
right now but it won't be forever (ask Dell and HP).

------
jedberg
I tried to find the data but I could not, but I wonder, what did blender sales
look like 15 years after their invention? 40 years? I picked blender because
it is a useful appliance that it seems most people have one of today, and some
people have had the same one for 30+ years (like my parents).

My point is, I wonder if this is just the typical performance of an appliance
-- at first there is a lot of innovation and sales growth, and then it slows
down as there just aren't that many new features to add and everyone has one.

~~~
Nickoladze
That's how I feel with smartphones. I've skipped the last 2 generations of
Nexus phones (although I had to go back and buy a Nexus 6 to use Google Fi)
simply because it works well enough for me and there are no new hardware
features that I care about.

I don't plan on upgrading until my phone starts to become a hindrance.

~~~
zanny
I have an S4. I'd consider an S5 if I could nab one for like $150, just to
hate slightly better hardware, and possibly stock 6.0 since the S4 won't get
it and Cyanogenmod is always a PITA to keep working.

------
wtbob
This makes sense. My existing second-gen Nexus 7 does everything I want it to
(basically, it's my TV when I'm home, and a portable paperback when I'm out &
about); I'd get a new one if there were something better, but so far there's
not. The Nexus 9 looks _too_ big: I really like that my 7 fits in my back
pocket or the inside breast pocket of a coat. The Pixel C looks like a
notebook which would be a pain to install Debian on — while it's great to have
a keyboard and a mouse, without emacs and a shell what's the point of a
notebook?

~~~
icebraining
I've read that the closest to a new version of a Nexus 7 is the Nvidia Shield
tablet, but frankly I don't really feel the need for anything more powerful.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Problem for tablet producers is they don't follow the 2 year phone contract
life cycle.

Neither do watches.

~~~
baldfat
Neither do phones now on MOST us carriers. Now we have 2 year leases.

~~~
jsight
Yes, and this will likely show up in shipment volume declines at some point if
they don't find a way to mitigate it.

I wonder if their financing plan is seeing strong uptake in the US? If it
does, they may be able to boost margins a bit.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's already showing up as shipment volume declines for the iPhone 6S series.

------
ricw
Interesting how smartphone, tablet as well as PC/laptop markets have stopped
their growth trajectory or even gone into decline. We seem to have reached
some form of market saturation (at least in developed countries) in
conjunction with a decline in technical innovation. Producers will need to
adapt to the different market dynamics and pressures.

Particularly Apple has not been used to these kind of pressures for a while.
Personally, I hope prices will come down a bit. Unsure what else may happen?!
A focus on services such as longer warranties or cloud services instead of
hardware?

Having said that, my 2+ year old iPhone, 3 year old iPad as well as 2+ year
old nexus tablet are still working perfectly fine. Why would I buy a new one
if the "old guard" is still more than adequate?

~~~
scholia
The PC market is 40 years old, so it's a fair bet that, in the developed
world, pretty much everyone who wants one has one.

The real problem is that a decent PC will now last five years (on average).
This means sales of PCs will halve compared to when they lasted 2.5 years,
even if usage stays exactly the same.

If smartphones only last 18 months, smartphones will sell at 3x the rate of
PCs even if usage is the same ;-)

Otherwise, I disagree somewhat about the "decline in technical innovation" in
the PC market. There's been a huge amount of innovation in Windows (adding
apps, touch and pen support, voice-controlled AI, cloud integration etc) and
in Windows hardware (smartphones, tablets, 2-in-1s, PC-on-a-stick, all-in-ones
etc).

Seems to me the innovation is well ahead of user (and developer) adoption,
which may be the real problem....

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>he real problem is that a decent PC will now last five years

The _real_ problem is that there are no killer apps driving a need for faster
hardware.

PC 1.0 was an office WP/accounts machine PC 2.0 was a home entertainment,
Internet and games machine PC 3.0 was a pocket/handheld version of 2.0, and is
still catching up with 2.0

Meanwhile we're still waiting for PC 4.0.

VR might be a good-enough driver, but I'm not yet convinced people want to use
a PC with a giant plastic blob clamped to their heads.

If displays shrink to the point where they're light and unobtrusive, and
hardware gets fast enough to have local versions of something like Siri (but
smarter and better), full VR/AR could definitely become a 4.0 thing.

~~~
scholia
_> The real problem is that there are no killer apps driving a need for faster
hardware._

Up to a point ;-)

The modern web is pretty much a killer app. Opening one tab in Chrome now
consumes more resources than Microsoft Word...

------
SN76477
Same story as the PC in 2001.

[http://www.appliancedesign.com/articles/84637-pc-data-
decemb...](http://www.appliancedesign.com/articles/84637-pc-data-december-
retail-pc-sales-fall-24-percent-from-1999)

Market saturation.

~~~
scholia
Except that PC sales grew for the next decade....

~~~
pixl97
Because PCs kept getting faster for the next decade... and software kept
requiring the faster speeds. Once we got to the point of the Intel Core Duo
(06-08) the modern processor was fast enough for the majority of the PC fleet.
You can take one of those 8 year old PCs and install Windows 10 on it and it
will work as long as you have at least 2gb of memory in it. Also, PCs at the
time didn't have much horizontal competition yet, notebooks were still pretty
expensive, smart phones weren't smart, and tablets didn't really exist.

The current and previous generation or two of tablets do what most people ask
of them. Facebook, Youtube, record some crappy video, all still work. If the
tablet stops working the user might just stick with their new smartphone with
a 6" screen.

~~~
stordoff
> Once we got to the point of the Intel Core Duo (06-08) the modern processor
> was fast enough for the majority of the PC fleet

Core 2 era was definitely the change-over point for me - before that I was
upgrading pretty much on a yearly basis. I then built a Core 2 Quad machine in
mid-2008, and stayed with the same hardware until mid-2013. TBH, that upgrade
(to a i7-4770K) wasn't really necessary - I only did it because I started
doing a fair amount of HD video encoding/editing. The Q6600 was handling
everything else fine.

~~~
scholia
After the Core Duo we got integrated graphics, built-in video (etc) support,
and lower TDPs that allowed thinner laptops with longer battery life. Oh, and
lower prices.

We also got 10-second start-up times via UEFI.

There are more things to PC life than raw single-core performance ;-)

------
mark_l_watson
I must be a statistical outlier. I use a 4 1/2 year old MacBook Air and a 6
year old Linux laptop for programming. No hurry to update my laptops that I
use for work (except I did buy a $200 Windows 10 laptop to play with, and a
Chromebook to see what it is like).

On the other hand, in the last 5 months, I bought the most recent iPad mini
and the iPad Pro (giving away my old iPads #1 and #2). I do use iPads for some
work. I am an author and I find them fine for research and typing in a few
paragraphs. They are great for watching movies, web browsing, and listening to
audio books. For some reason I like have the newest iPads but old work-horse
laptops are fine.

~~~
iolothebard
I have a Surface Pro 3 and I use my original Thinkpad Laptop most the time
instead. All I do is play a few android games on it or surf a bit (slowly).

Honestly not sure why I bought the SP3 outside of just wanted to try it out. I
keep thinking I want handwriting, I don't.

------
lsdafjklsd
As an artist the apple pencil has been a complete game changer for me. I don't
find tablets particularly useful for much other than drawing, and the apple
pencil delivers the most realistic experience to date. It used to be the case
that working digitally meant you needed to learn how to apply your skills to
the digital environment, but now when I draw / paint on the iPad I'm just
doing what I'd normally do; it looks the same.

~~~
hrnnnnnn
Have you tried one of those wacom drawing tablet/screen things? Is the latency
comparable (or even noticeable)?

------
miseg
After the responsive web design movement, I wonder if people will move back to
designing for desktop+phablet, forgetting about the tablet forms.

~~~
goldfeld
But this decline just means people aren't upgrading tablets so often, not that
they're not getting used. And tablets would seem to be primarily used for web
browsing (moreso a reason why people don't need the latest and greatest
features and performance).

------
pyrrhotech
I still see no reason to upgrade my iPad 2. I only use it for casual web
browsing on the sofa and reading on the airplane. What new features could be
useful enough to me to warrant an upgrade? Unless it gets damaged or the
battery craps out, I won't be buying a new one for a long time.

~~~
ChrisLTD
The iPad 2 was a great machine at the time, but it's saddled with a low-res
screen, very little RAM, and a slow processor. A newer iPad would be nicer on
your eyes, and would be far less likely to purge non-active browser tabs from
memory.

~~~
SilkRoadie
I recently switched my iPad 2 for the latest model. The main reason for the
switch was a broken screen on my old iPad. The new iPad is fantasic. I will be
upgrading my partners iPad 2 later this year.

The latest iPad is so much better. So much more response, you can have 2 apps
open at the same time. Web pages are fast and iOS is really snappy. Also,
touch id which I always saw as a gimmick turned out to be the handiest thing
ever. I now sigh when my thumb doesn't unlock my phone.

The only thing that niggles me a bit is I feel the life of the iPad2 was cut
slightly shorter by Apple and it's iOS updates. iOS7 killed the performance.
It shouldn't really have had the update or any update after. I am still not
sure if Apple gave delivered iOS updates to avoid fragmentation or to slowly
kill of the device to encourage new purchases.

I am not convinced either are valid reasons considering the degradation in
performance of an otherwise pretty good device.

------
nikanj
The only reason I'm thinking of upgrading my 1st generation ipad mini is how
slow it's become. Lesson learned, never let Apple install major software
updates on an older device. The same happened with my iPhone 4 when iOS 7 came
out, suddenly it became painfully slow.

------
Zigurd
Android isn't ready for large tablets. It needs a tiling window manager and
more apps need more consistent treatment of the clipboard. But if that were to
happen I'd rather use native Drive apps than the web ui.

------
npalli
Actually the decline is far worse (21.1%) for the classic slate form tablets.
Even though they are included in tablets, the iPad Pro or Surface Pro are
closer to a laptop in spirit than a tablet.

> IDC argues that the biggest trend to watch for in 2016 is the transition
> towards detachable devices. Indeed, pure slate tablets experienced their
> greatest annual decline to date of 21.1 percent, while detachable tablets
> more than doubled their shipments since the fourth quarter of last year.

------
Havoc
My 2013 Nexus still does the trick. Same with the S4. There is just no obvious
incentive to upgrade unless you play games on it or something

------
melted
Apple shot itself (and everybody else) in the foot by making tablets that last
forever. My first gen Air sees quite a bit of use, and it's working fine, so I
don't see a reason to upgrade. The only thing I wish it had is the fingerprint
sensor. Dazzle me, and I'll upgrade.

~~~
vlehto
If computers/tablets finally actually "mature" as a technology, apple might
have done the best possible thing ever. That used to be the Mercedes tactic.
Make sturdy cars for the first half a century of your existence. Then coast
with that reputation for the next five decades.

(It's curious I'm defending Apple on something. Usually I'm anti-fanboy.)

------
frankosaurus
This was predicted: [http://a16z.com/2014/02/07/love-affair-with-tablet-is-
over/](http://a16z.com/2014/02/07/love-affair-with-tablet-is-over/)

------
tweakz
The most interesting part to me is that the slate-only tablet form factor
appears to be dying. This is surprising given that phones have completely
adopted touch over physical keys, and yet tablets seem to be headed back to
supporting both.

~~~
scholia
That's really a figment of IDC's decision to count Microsoft Windows tablets
and 2-in-1s as tablets when the tablet format is usually more incidental than
essential. (1)

It also means that IDC's PC industry numbers are also misleading. If somebody
buys a Windows 2-in-1, that gets counted as a tablet and not counted as a PC.
This makes the PC market decline look worse than it really is.

(1) "Pure" Windows tablets -- ones with ARM chips that didn't run traditional
x86 software -- crashed and burned.

------
shmerl
A pity Jolla tablet project failed (I'm waiting for the refund). I doubt I'll
be buying any tablet soon, until may be 10nm Intel SoCs will come out and
there will be a tablet with such Intel GPU to run it with open drivers.

~~~
vpkaihla
The sad Jolla tale made me seriously ponder about making a full change to
Apple. I'm currently testing how an iPad Pro might work for a 95% laptop
replacement.

~~~
shmerl
_> The sad Jolla tale made me seriously ponder about making a full change to
Apple._

I supported Jolla because of their push for mobile Linux. I wouldn't touch
anything from Apple with a ten foot pole.

------
Yaggo
The market is saturated. I've bought many of my family's recent iOS devices as
second hand. A generation or two old devices are still fast enough for casual
use and offer great bang for the buck.

------
mmgutz
I'm not surprised. People are buying phablets instead of tablets. I haven't
used my iPad in I don't know how long. Don't need two devices.

------
hathym
I own an octa-core chinese phone from late 2014 purchased for 300 bucks, it
does everything I need in a smartphone. why would I need to buy a new one?

------
agumonkey
Also a thin laptop looks a lot like a tablet with a physical keyboard these
days.

