The Tablet Is Dead As We Know It - and That's Good

[Mark Spoonauer]

Called it.

Tablets lacks the power and overall flexibility of a laptop and the portability of a smart phone. With laptops becoming thinner and lighter and smartphones becoming bigger and stronger, why would anyone opt for a tablet that holds a lukewarm position in between?

Good point. It does seem like tablets have settled into a tweener position, and vendors need to be more creative to get them out of that rut.

 

[Mark Spoonauer]

The category stalled because we are all waiting on 20nm (or better 16/14nm coming just another few quarters later) and 64bit WITH the apps/games to use it too. In apple's case they had the 64bit but nothing special in the new versions vs. their previous model so no surprise people didn't see a WOW I need a new one in Apple. That buying shoe hasn't dropped yet on android/arm for many devices and most are waiting for a die shrink I think as that will bring massive changes in low power devices (what NV did on desktop was already impressive without the shrink and K1 is already very impressive for gpu).

At this point (heck many months ago for me) a 28nm device of any kind is out of the question for me (be it a soc, or a new desktop gpu I want). I think more people are looking at things as fairly capable gaming devices also in this area, so may be waiting either for more K1 tablets (stuff advertised directly as gaming devices that double as a tablet also, and 4K player) or the die shrink here too, more memory as standard, etc. They just seem to be giving us much of the same right now and the race to the bottom of pricing has created a lot of crappy devices with few real gems. 16GB should just be dealt a death blow as storage now on anything but a low end phone in an underdeveloped country 😉 Same story for anything under 3GB mem.

So we're waiting for 4GB+ mem, die shrinks, more capable gaming (K1+ power on gpu) and software that actually shows the gpu's new abilities. The next wave of xmas games will sell many tablets. Well, all games this year that aim at T4+ gpu levels should start to get more people to realize these things can now replace your console. Many of those same people realize the coming shrunk chips will make us start to see some REAL 64bit apps that show these tablets can act as a mini desktop/laptop when hooked to keyboard/mouse/monitor. Poor countries could start to use these to develop stuff on as this next shrink amps up power. They are useless for anything but consumption today, but that is about to change.

Thinner, and slightly better cameras don't make us buy now (even apple zealots see nothing special here). At this point I'm thinking THICKER is better (and you can give me back some battery...LOL). 2GB memory for $500 and only 16GB storage at apple? What did they expect? Samsung with some 64bit devices but 64bit turned off etc...Apple's next device will sell much better if they go to 4GB and 32GB storage for $500 along with the new chip.

Right now claiming 64bit is kind of like having a 4K bluray player in your living room. Sure it will work one day, but it's not worth much now with so little stuff to use on them. Best to wait 6 months, see all the 20nm stuff (possibly a few 16/14nm stuff tested too by then) and get some polish on 64bit along with some stuff that shows it's actually in there and means something. App/game devs need to catch up to the new hardware. I think they were kind of caught off guard by how fast mobile moved (console makers surely were too, or they wouldn't have aimed so low hardware wise) but we should have some stuff this year that uses multi-core, more mem, better gpus etc more efficiently and they'll start aiming higher knowing how many sell each year (1.2B phones yearly now and a LOT of those are top end, either samsung or apple stuff). You can now shoot much higher as a dev and know worst case a few hundred mil can use your app/games power at launch and a billion+ within 9 more months as the high end becomes low end again.

They still sell a lot of ps3/xbox360, but now you get that in mobile and even more power shortly after the shrinks of everything. New consoles can't do 4K either, another thing that might make someone go mobile and just hook it to TV for that. MS dropped the price ($50), dropped connect ($100) and still barely hit 11mil (sony has 18.5mil, but is 11mil MS sell-through or not?). So a mobile device shortly that does 4K, far more power than ps3/xbox360 with updated gpu tech etc for unreal 4 etc, ...hmmm, maybe I don't need a ps4/xbox1. I'm guessing many will ask themselves that this year hardcore console person or not. There are many reasons for stagnation, but they go away this year as power/perf amps up and devices get more mem/storage etc for that hopefully POLISHED 64bit OS by then (along with apps and games that show it off a bit better). I really can't explain apples phone sales though...Nothing special but they sold the heck out of them this Q. I was a bit surprised really. Anyway, tablets (hooked to other stuff) are about to become much more useful gaming and app wise which should change their sales numbers.

I'm curious what kind of killer 64-bit apps would really compel someone to buy a tablet.

 

[ninjustin]

Personally I'm in the market for a new tablet. If I could get something close to Apple build with Android I'd be in. I'd go with a Nexus 9 if the build wasn't so bad. There are a lot of bad Android tablets out there.

 

[razor512]

For the price of most good tablets, you can pretty much go for entry level gaming laptops. Tablets have very large profit margins, and that makes them a poor option when it comes to value.

 

[Vlad Rose]

As has been said by many others, what they currently have is good enough. Even the niche markets aren't going to do that well (like gaming) since most users don't buy these devices for that purpose; which is one of the only reasons why they'd upgrade. Nvidia has been hurting trying to get their Tegra chips to sell as a result and they K1 is nearly a bomb sales wise for them.

I'm also thinking that people are shying away from using these things as gaming devices since the Ouya and Gamestick was basically considered a flop in the console market as well. Does the tablet, or Ouya or Gamestick, even have a game that can compare to a console system? It doesn't really seem like it to me.

The final big issue they have is as these tablets keep getting more powerful, their price keeps creeping up slowly into the laptop market pricing; where you get much more a system for the price. The Surface 3 pro is one of the only expensive tablets I've seen that can even compete in that market.

Tablets are like the netbooks before them, the popular thing to buy at the time.

 

[alidan]

I bought my first tablet AND smartphone back in november at nearly the same time.
They are the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 plus.... My cellphones before were disposable tracfones from Wally World...

This coming from a STALWART defender of the WinTel platform (and DOS) going all the way back to the 8088/86's... AND a dedicated Apple hater that hated them with a passion, but also had various mac machines from the Classic, Color Classic, LCIII's, Blue iMac's, clones, etc...

I will prolly never buy another phone or tablet again(unless they get broken of course)...

Why?

Because they Just Work.

For decades now, I have grown tired of fighting windows. I have grown tired of religiously re-installing windows every 6 months or so. I have grown tired of proprietary hardware not playing well with each other... hunting for flaky drivers. and so on and so forth.

In other words, apples stuff just works... My next purchases will be their latest and greates laptop and a desktop, completing the circle.... After that, I will begin to retire my windows machines and hand them off to the kids. Completing THAT circle too. It's too bad they won't experience BBS's and the like. Oh well, maybe I could setup a DOS VM machine for that one lolol

um... im on 3 years on this current install, and thats 3 year 24/7 use with shutdowns every few months unless something happens to force a shutdown... and i narrowed that to having 150+ processes running...

i have no idea what you do, but you are NOT describing the windows experience i have... at least sense windows 7.

i find the lack of ability to mess with apples hardware outside of itunes infuriating (any apple hardware i come in contact with is familys and not mine, so i cant do anything to make my life easier when fixing/getting crap to work with it.)

 

[therealduckofdeath]

The simple fact is this was always inevitable. When the smartphone platform and the PC platform starts crossing paths because one gets slightly more powerful and the other gets a lot more power efficient, the PC platform was always going to win. Candy Crush or Battlefield 4? Office mobile or actual Office? Mobile web browsing or browsing the full web experience? No matter how you turn it, mobile loses this battle.

 

[Vlad Rose]

I bought my first tablet AND smartphone back in november at nearly the same time.
They are the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 plus.... My cellphones before were disposable tracfones from Wally World...

This coming from a STALWART defender of the WinTel platform (and DOS) going all the way back to the 8088/86's... AND a dedicated Apple hater that hated them with a passion, but also had various mac machines from the Classic, Color Classic, LCIII's, Blue iMac's, clones, etc...

I will prolly never buy another phone or tablet again(unless they get broken of course)...

Why?

Because they Just Work.

For decades now, I have grown tired of fighting windows. I have grown tired of religiously re-installing windows every 6 months or so. I have grown tired of proprietary hardware not playing well with each other... hunting for flaky drivers. and so on and so forth.

In other words, apples stuff just works... My next purchases will be their latest and greates laptop and a desktop, completing the circle.... After that, I will begin to retire my windows machines and hand them off to the kids. Completing THAT circle too. It's too bad they won't experience BBS's and the like. Oh well, maybe I could setup a DOS VM machine for that one lolol

How much did Apple pay you to write this? I, nor anyone I know has experienced the issues with Windows like you're trying to explain outside of Windows 95 and ME. Oh and as for Mac OSX? We have 3 of them at work and have just as many issues with those as the windows systems doing server duties that are constantly under higher loads.

The only way I can even think of a Windows machine having that kind of issues is maybe a Walmart $300 special; but then at that point you're comparing a $1200+ machine to one that's at most a quarter of the price.

 

[burkhartmj]

I bought my first tablet AND smartphone back in november at nearly the same time.
They are the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 plus.... My cellphones before were disposable tracfones from Wally World...

This coming from a STALWART defender of the WinTel platform (and DOS) going all the way back to the 8088/86's... AND a dedicated Apple hater that hated them with a passion, but also had various mac machines from the Classic, Color Classic, LCIII's, Blue iMac's, clones, etc...

I will prolly never buy another phone or tablet again(unless they get broken of course)...

Why?

Because they Just Work.

For decades now, I have grown tired of fighting windows. I have grown tired of religiously re-installing windows every 6 months or so. I have grown tired of proprietary hardware not playing well with each other... hunting for flaky drivers. and so on and so forth.

In other words, apples stuff just works... My next purchases will be their latest and greates laptop and a desktop, completing the circle.... After that, I will begin to retire my windows machines and hand them off to the kids. Completing THAT circle too. It's too bad they won't experience BBS's and the like. Oh well, maybe I could setup a DOS VM machine for that one lolol

Firstly, they don't "Just Work" and they never have. They're computing platforms and thus have plenty of bugs and hangups. I've dealt with my fair share of Apple devices [especially their blasted phones] and they're just a practice in frustration once you go more than 2 generations back. That's not a knock on them so much as a fact of life with mobile devices, but don't pretend Apple is somehow exempt from this when they aren't.

Secondly, either you're buying or using old and/or terrible hardware, or you've had uniquely bad luck with Windows. I've had every version since 3.1, and with the exception of Vista driver nightmares [which in reality was hardware vendor fault] it's been perfectly fine to use, and since 7 it's been amazingly smooth. I have a habit of blowing out and reinstalling Windows once a year, but even that has felt like overkill for like 5 years now [current build of win8.1 is sitting at around 2 years I believe].

You won't believe how many times I've heard people claim they were switching to $1000+ macs because their $200 Windows laptop was giving them problems. Makes it really hard to believe when people complain about the OS in a general sense.

 

[Isumbras1]

What b*****s, i couldn't work as effectively without my iPad. I do't want a large iPhone and cetainly not a crappy, buggy, clumsy Android phone.

 

[Isumbras1]

Windoze is crap since XP. I'm a technician and stopped working on PC's many years ago because when they get screwed up they really get screwed up. Try setting up drivers on a Dell or an HP and you'll know what I'm talking about; even ostensibly identical Dells and HPs have different graphics, audio cards etc whatever is cheapest at time of manufacture. And all those dll files - nightmare. And PC owners are barmy and impossible to work for. I did have one good Windoze machine once, a Sony Thinkpad running under XP, I foolishly upgraded to Vista and found myself in a "world of s**t".

Sorting out a sick PC costs real money; Microsoft like that!

 

[Enarc Kram]

"Negative growth" shouldn't really be a term.

 

[Vlad Rose]

Windoze is crap since XP. I'm a technician and stopped working on PC's many years ago because when they get screwed up they really get screwed up. Try setting up drivers on a Dell or an HP and you'll know what I'm talking about; even ostensibly identical Dells and HPs have different graphics, audio cards etc whatever is cheapest at time of manufacture. And all those dll files - nightmare. And PC owners are barmy and impossible to work for. I did have one good Windoze machine once, a Sony Thinkpad running under XP, I foolishly upgraded to Vista and found myself in a "world of s**t".

Sorting out a sick PC costs real money; Microsoft like that!

Well, you just hit the nail on the head with what we're talking about in comparing an cheap PC to an expensive apple. Dell and HP are junk brands, using the cheapest parts they can find. It's not an issue with Windows in those cases, it's with those companies themselves.

Now if you compare a Falcon Northwest, Alienware (Dell's high end), or similar boutique computer that is in the same price range of an Apple, you will have more powerful hardware and none of the issues you keep referring to.

Pardon the pun, but you're trying to compare Apples to Lemons instead of the same market.

 

[Anaxamenes]

I haven't found a reason to buy a tablet. My phone goes everywhere and if I'm taking a larger device, it's my macbook pro because I want to be able to do a lot more with it than just watch youtube. I would consider a Surface because it has many more artistic options but in reality, I probably wouldn't use it enough to justify the costs. I didn't even upgrade my iPhone 4 until the 6 came out because the incremental upgrades each year are yawn inducing, so that's even less incentive to go for another piece of tech equipment.

And for those who will want to Apple bash me, I'm writing this on my Windows Desktop PC. Like someone mentioned above, I grow tired of dealing with Windows and the overabundance of mediocre offerings that I have to make it through to find the gems. My mac and iphone just work. I don't have to go deep into settings to eek out a bit more performance or wipe and install the operating system that seems to be needed far too often on Windows.

 

[photonboy]

"you cant have negative growth. that would be a loss."

Five seconds using Google would have shown you the article used the term correctly:
http/www.investopedia.com/terms/n/negative-growth.asp

 

[kevin freels]

I had a hard time finally deciding to buy a tablet. I just couldn't figure out what I would use it for. Laying on the couch watching TV, I watch a big screen. If I want to play a game, I grab my phone. I ABHOR touch screen keyboards so if I have to do any type of typing, i grab my tablet PC (have owed the Dell XT2, Fujitsu T730, and Lenovo Twist). I LOVE my Twist because if I want a tablet I can have one. It's a bit large and heavy but I hardly use it that way. The surface is nice but it won't sit up in my lap Not sure what fool at MS overlooked that one.
But I ended up buying a Nexus 7 in the middle of the hype. It was a poor substitute for my kindle. It was kind of useless really and eventually replaced the magazines in the bathroom. I guess that was worthy. Putting a tablet in each bathroom makes sense. lol
But then I found the ultimate use for it. I put it in an magnetized case and stuck it on my fridge. I tied together evernote, tasker, and commander and came up with the ability to just holler "OK Google, add milk to the grocery list" and bam, it's on my PC, my phone, my wife's phone, and everywhere else. It displays constant weather updates from my personal weather station outside. I can use it to "intercom" my kids and tell them it's time to eat, I can rapidly look up recipes, use speech to launch music and choose the songs I want to hear, use speech to find out what movies are playing, query my calendar, set reminders, start pandora, get OK google to do quick math and measurement conversions in the kitchen, control my bose system, play the news, remind me when i need to leave for work, and use google voice to call people in a pinch.....all while my hands are full. This is perhaps the ONLY good use for a tablet and I'm waiting for even more functionality. I'd like to have one in each room on the wall, displaying photos as a frame or whatever and ready to be my assistant as needed. I'm really working to expand tasker integration to make it even more useful. That's what these things are good for. Not much else. lol

 

[zodiacfml]

There are plenty reasons for this...and the least of them are stated in the article.
The tablet is the answer for more performance and bigger screens for the smartphones a few years ago. Tablets are usually left at home and less used compared to phones.
Windows machines are also approaching tablet usability and convenience.
Tablets will not die though as PCs never did.

 

[InvalidError]

Tablets will not die though as PCs never did.

PCs, at least in their conventional form factors, are not faring too good at the moment. While they might not die, they are losing market share. Most of the non-PC-gamer, non-IT/engineering people I know would not care if I replaced their PC with something else that still enables them to watch Netflix, Youtube, read web sites, eMail and use Skype... even a 6-8 years old PC can do all of these fairly well.

 

[VanGilder Michael]

Your article states ‘While the overall market will probably never bounce back to previous levels’. Of course, the market is ALREADY saturated. That only happens once per product. In order to make It happen again, there must be an ENTIRE DIFFERENT product.
To achieve this. I suggest, a lot more RAM, and STORAGE. And not just an extra gigabyte, or two. I mean A LOT MORE, we could start with a threefold increase. So where 2 gig exists, it will turn into 6 gig. And then the connectivity issue. I do not know if a ‘wireless’ charging exist yet, that could compete with the claims I hear the USB type C can offer. But you can see where this is leading. The whole ‘POWER’, Schtick, will need to be reborn. A better battery, and charging scheme.
And then display. I ‘personally’, am sweet to the ‘super AMOLED’. But, I am talking about a, re-birth, and the ‘super AMOLED’, is last generation. So there needs to be a ‘super-duper AMOLED’. I’m thinking, less power consumption, better viewing angle, and a finger print reader built into the display itself. I can’t see much improvement that better resolution could offer, for a little 10 inch screen. So resolution will be last on my queue, of improvements to make.
AND then, the most important change. The tablet needs to be modular. Where you can swap out parts, for newer ones. Like a desktop. Now, since the market is already saturated, that modular addition, will not hurt, subsequent sales.
I think, with all these improvements. Then you COULD see the sale of tablets return to previous levels. You would have a NEW product. It could work.

 

[somebodyspecial]

The category stalled because we are all waiting on 20nm (or better 16/14nm coming just another few quarters later) and 64bit WITH the apps/games to use it too. In apple's case they had the 64bit but nothing special in the new versions vs. their previous model so no surprise people didn't see a WOW I need a new one in Apple. That buying shoe hasn't dropped yet on android/arm for many devices and most are waiting for a die shrink I think as that will bring massive changes in low power devices (what NV did on desktop was already impressive without the shrink and K1 is already very impressive for gpu).

At this point (heck many months ago for me) a 28nm device of any kind is out of the question for me (be it a soc, or a new desktop gpu I want). I think more people are looking at things as fairly capable gaming devices also in this area, so may be waiting either for more K1 tablets (stuff advertised directly as gaming devices that double as a tablet also, and 4K player) or the die shrink here too, more memory as standard, etc. They just seem to be giving us much of the same right now and the race to the bottom of pricing has created a lot of crappy devices with few real gems. 16GB should just be dealt a death blow as storage now on anything but a low end phone in an underdeveloped country 😉 Same story for anything under 3GB mem.

So we're waiting for 4GB+ mem, die shrinks, more capable gaming (K1+ power on gpu) and software that actually shows the gpu's new abilities. The next wave of xmas games will sell many tablets. Well, all games this year that aim at T4+ gpu levels should start to get more people to realize these things can now replace your console. Many of those same people realize the coming shrunk chips will make us start to see some REAL 64bit apps that show these tablets can act as a mini desktop/laptop when hooked to keyboard/mouse/monitor. Poor countries could start to use these to develop stuff on as this next shrink amps up power. They are useless for anything but consumption today, but that is about to change.

Thinner, and slightly better cameras don't make us buy now (even apple zealots see nothing special here). At this point I'm thinking THICKER is better (and you can give me back some battery...LOL). 2GB memory for $500 and only 16GB storage at apple? What did they expect? Samsung with some 64bit devices but 64bit turned off etc...Apple's next device will sell much better if they go to 4GB and 32GB storage for $500 along with the new chip.

Right now claiming 64bit is kind of like having a 4K bluray player in your living room. Sure it will work one day, but it's not worth much now with so little stuff to use on them. Best to wait 6 months, see all the 20nm stuff (possibly a few 16/14nm stuff tested too by then) and get some polish on 64bit along with some stuff that shows it's actually in there and means something. App/game devs need to catch up to the new hardware. I think they were kind of caught off guard by how fast mobile moved (console makers surely were too, or they wouldn't have aimed so low hardware wise) but we should have some stuff this year that uses multi-core, more mem, better gpus etc more efficiently and they'll start aiming higher knowing how many sell each year (1.2B phones yearly now and a LOT of those are top end, either samsung or apple stuff). You can now shoot much higher as a dev and know worst case a few hundred mil can use your app/games power at launch and a billion+ within 9 more months as the high end becomes low end again.

They still sell a lot of ps3/xbox360, but now you get that in mobile and even more power shortly after the shrinks of everything. New consoles can't do 4K either, another thing that might make someone go mobile and just hook it to TV for that. MS dropped the price ($50), dropped connect ($100) and still barely hit 11mil (sony has 18.5mil, but is 11mil MS sell-through or not?). So a mobile device shortly that does 4K, far more power than ps3/xbox360 with updated gpu tech etc for unreal 4 etc, ...hmmm, maybe I don't need a ps4/xbox1. I'm guessing many will ask themselves that this year hardcore console person or not. There are many reasons for stagnation, but they go away this year as power/perf amps up and devices get more mem/storage etc for that hopefully POLISHED 64bit OS by then (along with apps and games that show it off a bit better). I really can't explain apples phone sales though...Nothing special but they sold the heck out of them this Q. I was a bit surprised really. Anyway, tablets (hooked to other stuff) are about to become much more useful gaming and app wise which should change their sales numbers.

I'm curious what kind of killer 64-bit apps would really compel someone to buy a tablet.

Late here, but I'd say a complete port of adobe suite and other popular stuff that poor people just can't afford a PC for allowing poor to create content etc instead of just consume it with these. Meaning these would fit a mobile purpose and a substitute for PC at home. Adobe has been amping up their android stuff already, but gaming will sell more of these first (this already requires more power, then the REAL apps come). My point about apps was really for chips after xmas or so when the 64bit OS is more polished and we start seeing 4GB mem, etc. I'm thinking more along the lines of amping up developing nations here (or poor from everywhere I guess), rather than a USA buyer with a good job 😉 I have a PC for that stuff. There are a lot of people familiar with Android but have no windows experience (and no pc) and no desire to learn it. With some of the most used PC apps running on android 64bit you could see the poorer people among us start developing on these things when hooked up to a monitor/key/mouse at home (plugged in of course).

If you exclude windows tablets, PC worldwide sales are well under 280mil/year (and many of that goes to businesses). So a capable tablet is already being used as this, but they need more power to get real apps over there. 14nm all this year, and a switch to 10nm next year (Q4 or so) or early 2017 should make my point a reality for a lot of people. Everything around them is getting smaller/faster/less power also to help them become more like a PC's power (the lower end anyway). IE samsung's new ufs storage:
http/www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2477409,00.asp
We'll have die shrinks of memory lowering power too etc. That gives more room for SOC power even as they themselves shrink too. The storage above is faster and 50% less power. A few more revs of stuff like this and other parts in the device doing the same and you'll have a very power unit that serves many purposes (a PC doesn't leave your house etc and it's a luxury item even in usa for some still).