
Worldwide Tablet Market Continues to Decline - prostoalex
http://idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25811115
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AdmiralAsshat
I don't know why anyone's shocked. The first few years of tablets sales were
by people buying their first tablets because it was the hot new technology.
Now that we all have one, there's no need to buy a new one every year or every
two years (in the case of cell-phones, which are mostly fueled by carrier
subsidies). My HP Touchpad from 2011 still works fine--particularly since I
made it an Android tablet by installing Cyanogenmod on it, thus keeping it on
a far more recent Android version than any other tablet from this era would
carry on their OEM firmware. It's not terribly speedy, but I can still run
stuff on it, so for a bedside comic book reader and Netflix machine, it works
just fine.* I have no real reason to upgrade anytime soon, particularly since
I've got a 2013 Nexus 7 that still runs great.

The industry needs to stop thinking of tablet sales like cellphones and start
thinking of tablets like laptops and computers. We're not going to buy new
ones every two years because we spent anywhere from $300-$500 on the damn
things: we expect them to work for awhile. The same reason that when the
computer I spent over a grand building ten years ago stops being able to run
modern games on even the lowest settings, I'm going to load CentOS on it and
turn it into a media server: because I want to get my money's worth.

* It also fits very well into an iCade cabinet. Touchpad running MAME4Droid inside the iCade is a popular attraction at monthly gamenight.

~~~
TD-Linux
>2013 Nexus 7 that still runs great.

The eMMC on mine is toast, I shopped around and couldn't find anything that I
liked better and so ordered a new motherboard. Are there any other options
around that size that make sense as the Nexus 7 is discontinued?

~~~
officemonkey
If you find one, let me know. The Nexus 7 was the best Android tablet I've
seen.

I've used the iPad mini and it's very very good. It's also twice the price of
what I bought my Nexus 7 for.

~~~
TD-Linux
Well, my motherboard transplant went successfully, so I'm no longer in the
market for a while.

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Falkon1313
I bought a tablet awhile back, not really knowing what I'd use it for, but
thinking that it might encourage/inspire new things. In practice, I found only
one extremely limited use for it. The 10" screen, turned vertical, most
approximates paper books (compared to a phone, e-reader, or widescreen
monitor). For textbooks, or other ebooks that need layout and color, it's
good, and convenient that I don't need to be at the desk. But that's it.
That's the only thing it's good for.

If I'm just reading a text-based ebook, then an e-ink reader is better, even
with the smaller screen. If I'm wandering around somewhere, the phone is more
portable. If I'm doing anything that requires an actual user interface more
sophisticated than 'tap', then a laptop or desktop is better.

As a consumer device, I found the tablet to be a solution without a problem.
It excelled at nothing. It wouldn't surprise me if tablets drop back to
specific industrial/commercial uses where a laptop/chromebook is too
inconvenient and a phone is too small.

~~~
icefox
I have a iphone, ipad and macbook. At home my go to device is the the ipad
when I am not at my desk.

The laptop takes way to long to un-suspend, easily gets too hot in my lap, and
the battery life all too easily gets turned into something that is just a few
hours by the wrong running program. The power jack is located up in my office.
It is a portable computer, but spends most of its time on my desk and is handy
for several times a year when I bring it out of the house (and the last time I
actually grabbed the ipad over my laptop...).

When I need a quick and dirty question what was that movie that came out in
1984 about that cowboy or whatnot pulling out the phone and browsing it is a
perfect fit. Same goes for wasting 5 minutes playing a game, checking stocks,
maybe see what is new on hacker news.

But at home while the phone is on me, the ipad is usually around the living
room and it has all the apps the iphone has, but with a much bigger screen.
After selling the ipad2 and getting the Air my only complaint about weight
also went out the window. For casual consumption the ipad is my device of
choice. A screen big enough that I can read articles, go to websites like ebay
and get a real interface and not their tiny mobile version, read pdf's,
netflix, play neat games, youtube etc. Given that it has the same charger as
the phones there are several charging spots around the living area of the
house so it is not off hidden in my office all day.

I have caught myself a number of times starting to browse the web on my phone
only to stop, put the phone in my pocket and grab the ipad to continue where I
was. I wont be bringing the ipad to work or around town, that is what the
phone is for, but around the house be it the living room, backyard, etc the
ipad is my preferred choice.

Lastly for kids while I don't give my daughter my phone or my laptop she can
use the ipad. I am not sure how universal that is, but just about every parent
I know does the same.

To answer your question the tablet is a better device for longer term
consumption around the house than a laptop or a phone is.

The upgrade cycle is slower than the phone, but I am not just spouting my
opinion I am putting my money where my mouth is and in fact I am expecting a
Air 2 in the mail next week.

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cletus
The computing market is in a weird state.

I'm sure we all remember netbooks. They sprung up overnight. I remember Sony
and others calling them a "race to the bottom" yet they seemed to disappear
almost as quickly as they appeared.

I honestly thought the tablet market was going to be huge. FWIW I use my iPad
a ton.

In both cases there was a certain amount of convergence. Costs on laptops came
down so you could get good specs for a relatively low cost. The 2nd Macbook
Air was (IMHO) game-changing here and it took competitors several years to
match the hardware/price point.

With tablets phone have gotten larger to the point where the line between
phone is blurry when phones can be 6" and tablets 7". Personally I hate this
trend and still have an iPhone 5 because I like the size.

Now I think device longevity has something to do with all this. I'm sure there
are people happily using the original iPad, or at least the iPad 2. There's
really no reason for most people to upgrade or replace any computer until it
dies.

So I don't really know where the market. Laptops/desktops aren't a growth
market. If tablets are in decline and netbooks are essentially extinct, what's
left? Are phones the only growth area? What happens when that market hits
maturity as I'm sure it will at some point?

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smt88
Netbooks haven't disappeared. My family and many friends use them as their
only non-smartphone device. They're called "Chromebooks" or "cloudbooks" now.

The tablet market _was_ huge, but it was because people craved cheap, usable
laptops (see comment above). Something without a physical keyboard or a stand
is simply not very useful. It's a portable TV. People wanted the laptop form
factor, and all those keyboard/dock accessories became almost standard.

You're right, though, that device longevity has a lot to do with it. Same with
laptops. If you have a decent laptop with a SSD from a few years ago, you're
not missing all that much by not buying a new one this year.

I don't really see why there has to be any area for major growth right now. A
lot of these form factors have reached relative maturity. We'll eventually get
to the point where all the computing power we need fits into our phone, and we
can just use "dumb" form factors (TV, laptop shell, etc.) to project our
phone. Then we'll really see the decline of the other form factors.

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na85
The decline in the market is a good thing. It means we're moving towards a
place where vendors won't consider their hardware to be cash cows, and release
an incremental update every year for people to line up for. More importantly,
it means the consumer is starting to wake up to the fact that they don't have
to replace their device every two years.

Like the much-heralded death of the PC, I think this is simply a manifestation
of the fact that Everyone Already Has One™.

~~~
officemonkey
Also, where's the innovation? I want better battery life, more memory,
cellular data, a memory card slot.

My existing tablet is "good enough" but I'd upgrade for something that is
better, otherwise I'll wait until it dies and buy something at a similar price
point.

~~~
smt88
Unfortunately, "better battery life" isn't compatible with thinner, better
screen, or faster. Of course there is progress being made in CPUs/GPUs that
improve battery life without sacrificing speed, but it so far hasn't been
revolutionary. The iPad 2 still has specs that work for most people.

As for memory, I assume you meant of the storage (rather than RAM) variety.
That's intentionally not expandable, because they want _some_ way to make your
old device obsolete.

Cellular data has been available in tablets almost since the iPad came out, so
I'm not sure what you mean there...

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potatolicious
> _" That's intentionally not expandable, because they want some way to make
> your old device obsolete."_

This only makes sense if they were increasing storage capacity year over year
- but this hasn't been the case for a while.

We've been on the 16/32/64GB system for a preeeetty long time now.

Storage isn't being expanded because the demand for local storage is
decreasing for most users - where someone used to sling around gigs of music
it's now streamed on-demand. Ditto videos.

Expandability isn't prioritized because most users who bought the old
expandable devices never used it, and it creates user confusion when they use
it without knowing what they're doing - the lack of an explicit file system in
tablet UX means that users don't keep tabs on where their apps/data actually
live and then get confused when they eject the memory card.

Expandable storage sadly has always been a niche, power-user feature.

Planned obsolescence is sometimes a thing, but in this case it seems reaching.

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officemonkey
>Storage isn't being expanded because the demand for local storage is
decreasing for most users - where someone used to sling around gigs of music
it's now streamed on-demand. Ditto videos.

Is this a feature that the users want? Or a feature that iTunes, Google,
Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify want? It's interesting to me that the "drive for
bigger drives" stopped the exact moment monetization of cloud services came on
the scene.

Me, I'd LOVE to have my entire MP3 connection on my tablet. I'd also like to
have enough space to put a half-dozen movies on my tablet for long
car/airplane trips. Hell, give me a 1 TB drive and I can store most of my
entire video collection in my tablet.

But they're not making tablets that big. Coincidence?

You're probably right, I don't "need" expandability. I _do_ need more built-in
memory.

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Animats
The biggest source of tablets is "Other", at 45%. Tablets are now a generic
product. Hundreds of manufacturers wrap plastic around a battery, touchscreen,
and an ARM-based tablet SOIC chip, loads up the open source version of
Android, and sells the result for under $50. That's the real tablet market.

There's been a desperate attempt by the high-end players to keep the price up,
but it's failing. The under-$50 tablets used to be something you had to get in
Shentzen or via Alibaba. Now they're on Amazon.

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vannevar
I don't believe the tablet market is declining at all, they've simply shrunk
them a bit and added phone functionality so that they're categorized as
phones. If you have an iPhone 6 Plus or a Samsung Galaxy Note, you don't need
another tablet.

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reilly3000
The iPad pro may turn this a bit. Also, are Surface Pros considered Tablets?
They have been quite popular.

~~~
farnsworth
Yeah, I was surprised that Microsoft didn't show up in the list. I'm guessing
they didn't count Surface Pros.

~~~
bobajeff
"Total tablet market includes slate tablets plus 2-in-1 tablets. References to
"tablets" in this release include both slate tablets and 2-in-1 devices."

