Opinions - Is the tablet destined to be a TV companion device?

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The tablet market is already experiencing growing pains as it struggles to define itself.

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Read more.

Does anyone do a tablet that allows multiple user accounts? I haven't found one so far - which leads me to assume that the current tablets are really designed to fit in-between smartphones and netbook/laptops, really being nothing more than bigger screen versions of the smartphones.

I'd kind of hoped that someone would have looked at that "Joggler" thing that O2 used to do and targetted something at that market. Tablets (at the moment) are too expensive to have one per family member, so a shared one makes more sense to me. Trouble is that they're single-user devices!

Getting back to the article, think ScottB has got it right - you can access the web easily enough on smartphones, and office stuff is better on a netbook. Which means that video consumption is the major deal for tablets, (unless you can't deal with scrolling around the screen on a phone - in which case I guess web browsing is also a use).

I use my tablet for web browsing (the extra screen real estate (as compared to my 3.2" Magic) is invaluable), as an ereader, for casual gaming, and for streaming internet radio. I'll also use it as a music player while I'm browsing or reading, if I feel like it. Despite my protestations to the contrary, I've actually found myself very rarely using it for productivity: in fact I use my HTPC for productivity more than my tablet.

Now, that may in part be a failing of the hardware, which is quite slow and difficult to set up and work at even with a USB keyboard; it may be in part a failing of the software, as there isn't really a mature office suite for Android at the minute; it may in part be a failing of the form factor as a whole. Most likely it's a combination of all of those things. I'm not completely ready to write off the tablet as a productivity tool, but it's got some way to go yet.

As to tablets with multiple user accounts: that depends on what you call tablets! The Acer Iconia W500 is a tablet form factor but runs full fat Windows 7, so you can have as many user accounts as you want on it. But I suspect you weren't really talking about tablets with the x86 architecture. It's another blur of the line though...

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

As to tablets with multiple user accounts: that depends on what you call tablets! The Acer Iconia W500 is a tablet form factor but runs full fat Windows 7, so you can have as many user accounts as you want on it. But I suspect you weren't really talking about tablets with the x86 architecture. It's another blur of the line though...

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I'm cheap - any tablet that costs more than a decent laptop is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. But you're correct - folks are so busy being dazzled by the iPad that they forget that there's some x86 gear out there too.

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Originally Posted by crossy

I'm cheap - any tablet that costs more than a decent laptop is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned.

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Couldn't agree more. I spent £90 on mine. It does more than half of what I'd do with a laptop, so I reckon I got a decent deal :D

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Apple has much less of a presence in the Chinese market and, according to Dell, the consumer is much more savvy, which is a bit counter-intuitive.

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Not necessarily. One way of interpreting that is that they are more price-conscious and perhaps less influenced by a Western-oriented fashion-icon price premium.

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Tablets sit exactly in between the smartphone and the notebook, but merely filling a form-factor gap is not enough of a reason for most consumers to buy one. Tablets need to have a point - a compelling use-case - and I'm increasingly of the belief that it will be as a living room second screen, and more specifically as a TV companion device.

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They sit in that gap in term of form-factor, but I'd argue it's more than that.

Any of these devices have to either fulfil a need, even if we don't know we have a need, or create one to be a success. And smart-phones and tablets never were, in my opinion, going to be a viable substitutes for each other, though there is an element of cross-over, not least from people that already have smart-phones. But a tablet is never going to have the single biggest feature of a mobile phone, smart or otherwise, which is the compact size making it a very plausible device to easily carry about. The whole point of such devices is carryability, and communication away from home. Because of their size, tablets are inherently going to be of very limited use in that context. Their benefit, therefore, is ease of use, screen size and how that translates into meeting that need for the consumer, in a much more geographically constrained location. That is, you might use a tablet in the home, or in the pub, or conceivably even in a train or plane, but it's never going to be a popular device for holding to you eyes or ears while wandering down the high street, or casually answering or putting on the table while trying to pick up a girl in a nightclub.

I'd agree it's an ideal device for the type of TV interaction described, but I'd also argue it's going to have to be a hell of a lot more than that for most people to get them to fork out £300-£500 for one, let alone the premium of iPads. The instant-on (or nearly so) is one important aspect, but so is net access, forum browsing, email-checking, social networking etc, while sitting at the kitchen table, lounging on the sofa, laying in bed, relaxing in the summer sun at a table in the garden with a cocktail, or for the braver among us, taking a bath. A tablet is large enough to be a comfortable experience doing that rather than trying to either do it on a poncy little smartphone screen, of lugging a laptop around.

It's all about the user experience, in my view, IF tablets are to take off. I think they will, but it's still a pretty immature market, and they are still devices with what looks to me to be very much an early-adopter price premium.

After all, laptops (by which I include the evolution from luggable notebooks to netbooks) took about 20 years to go from the extremely expensive, mainly business-oriented niche products to the ubiquitous and modestly-priced products we've had for the last few years. Anyone looking at laptops in the days when five grand was relatively cheap would never have predicted that they'd become so cheap, and commonplace, let alone, for many people, a desktop substitute.

I think it's too early to pigeon-hole tablets. After all, what we do with mobile phones, and the price of them, bears no real resemblance to the first decade or so of their existence, and who'd have predicted texting for the hit it was, much less twitter?

I think we mainly agree with each other on this Saracen, and of course the tablet won't be used solely to interact with the TV. But I'm wondering if that's the killer use-case that will drive mass-market adoption.

It might be, Scott, but I hope it's more than that. Perhaps a fusion of different things. After all, that's a large part of the smart-phone's success .... different benefits, or a mix of them, appeal to different people for different reasons. If the tablet is to be a big success, it has to be (IMHO, of course) more than a TV accessory, or it could end up as little more than a 21st Century realisation of the TV remote control, and that'd be a crying shame and a tremendous waste of potential. I think the tablet has a huge potential, maybe even more so than smart-phones, but it remains to be seen if it's realised, or not. And if it is, how long it takes. Price is still, IMHO, an issue right now, certainly for the mass market. Halve them, and we'll see.

I think in ten years time we'll resurrect this thread and wonder how we ever did without tablets.

Smartphones are amazingly useful but they're compromised by the size of the screen and keyboard. When we have high speed internet access wherever we go tablets will come into their own.

At the moment 3G just isn't good enough to make the most of current devices let alone future developments, and 4G looks like it will only be available in major cities for the foreseeable future so I don't expect to see usage explode just yet, but if and when a good connection speed becomes available at a reasonable price I think they'll become part of our lives much like the filofax did for many people in the 80's. Just lots more useful.

Well if you all come along to Bletchley Park at the weekend you will be able to see an "Apple Newton".

On the contrary I think the smartphone still has the greater potential precisely because of its size. We take our smartphones with us wherever we go, but I don't think that will ever be the case with tablets, and even if we did they're still not as convenient to use on the move as smartphones.

That's not to say they won't continue to grow and, to some extent, eat into the notebook market, but uses such as navigation, augmented reality, LBS, sharing photos, instant messaging, listening to music, mobile wallet and, of course, talking will remain primarily smartphone things. Hence my theory that domestic use is where tablets will come into their own.

Oh, I think that the domestic scene, or perhaps a better way of putting it would be a more geographically limited scene, is where tablets will prosper. After all, they could end up dominant in business use too. For instance, a tablet could end up replacing desktop computers in years to come, albeit perhaps with optional external screen and keyboard for some uses .... and probably voice recognition for others. They'll never replace the smart-phone, precisely because one is aimed at and designed primarily for mobile use, and the main feature (screen size) of the other makes it largely inappropriate for that purpose.

But why have a fixed, bulky desktop or tower, when for most people, the functions they use a desktop for could be done by a more advanced (and more powerful) version of a tablet? As and when the capability of tablets evolves to that point (and it's a way off yet), I'd expect the desktop/tower market to collapse to a niche level, for power junkies, gamers, etc, and the tablet to becomes a ubiquitous household computing interface. At the very least, it has the potential to become that when technology gives it the computing muscle to handle it.

And who knows where this will end up. Perhaps a domestic "server" with user profiles, and when you pick up a tablet, it identifies who has it (perhaps by some form of biometrics), and adapts to that user's profile, file access, usage permissions etc. So a household could have several tablets dotted around the place, and you use whichever's nearest, and it always appears to be set up however that user (or the household admin in the event of kids with access) determines. It could be an interface device, with fixed screens, so the kitchen may have a wall-mounted monitor that's a TV when you want TV, or a video interface for video calls, or a display for your electronic cookbook when you're creating. It could also monitor your larder's contents, and build a provisional shopping list for your home delivery orders.

The smart-phone has the edge in terms of functionality, mainly because it's got a few years lead, and it will likely always have a place for sheer portability. But just as that portability is a major plus when out and about, it's a major drawback when not out and about, because of the limitations of the screen size, and the user interface.

An awful lot, for tablets, depends on what applications, and uses, develop for them. After all, technology enables developments, but the developments that really set the world on fire often were never envisaged when the technology was developed. Some examples would be social networking, consumer SatNav, and even the internet itself. I remember the days when so-called tech gurus (not a pot-shot at you, I mean the guys in the mags years ago) ridiculed Bill Gates for his "vision" of a computer in every home. That "ridiculous" vision isn't looking so daft now, though.

I'm not saying this will happen any time soon, or that the current generation are capable of it. That's why i say it's the potential for tablets, not that it has or necessarily even will happen. But I think they have the potential to radically change the way most of us interact with the e-world, most of the time ... except when we're out and about, which will be the province of some evolution of the smart-phone.

This is probably what it'll turn into, a mixture of smartphone portability with a large fold-out screen:-

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Scienc...p?NewsNum=1410

Will definitely become a home device of some sort but definitely will be a link to the TV will be a big portion of its use. It will also consolidate things that is already done now. Predict use of laptops at home will dimish unless it is for real work.

Tablets will be the link to TV where TV will become the screen for Internet Content. Sorta like HTPC.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Oh, I think that the domestic scene, or perhaps a better way of putting it would be a more geographically limited scene, is where tablets will prosper. After all, they could end up dominant in business use too. For instance, a tablet could end up replacing desktop computers in years to come, albeit perhaps with optional external screen and keyboard for some uses .... and probably voice recognition for others. They'll never replace the smart-phone, precisely because one is aimed at and designed primarily for mobile use, and the main feature (screen size) of the other makes it largely inappropriate for that purpose.

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Here's a thought - tablets (like the netbooks before them) - get larger. When they get to the 14"+ sizes (which is possible given lighter and lighter screens), it's possible for the laptop (excluding the few desktop replacement ones) to be replaced with a tablet and a suitable keyboard "docking station" a la Motorola Atrix.

Said docking station may have extra battery capacity, but it'll be definitely "do able" to put the ports missing from current tablets (so that's 2+ USB plus HDMI and maybe mains power) in the keyboard. Certainly this'd be possible with one of the two laptops that I've got docked in front of me at the moment - not exactly a high powered piece of kit and I'm sure a dual or quad-core tablet would probably be just as good an "experience".

That said (and I apologize for the inadvertent HP advert) I just got one of these HP "Photosmart eStation" printers. This has a 7" Android tablet as a display/control screen and I'm struck how natural this seems after a short while. So there's maybe another use for the smaller tablets - dock them into printers to give a smart/standalone device with capabilities matching that of most PC's+printer at a fraction of the size/cost/power. That said, there's something that appeals to the geek in me in being able to watch an episode of Futurama on my printer! ;)