Tablet market suffers 12th straight quarter of decline

[HEXUS]

Caught between growing demand for smartphones and strengthening PC sales.

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[philehidiot]

I think the other thing here is that tablets tend to be bought outright whereas a smartphone is on an almost guaranteed two year cycle. The battery is usually toast after that period whereas the bigger battery in a tablet means it can loose 20% of capacity and still be usable, plus it lasting all day isn't critical like a smartphone. Add to that the use case of a tablet and that mine still has a Snapdragon 800 in it and runs just fine and you have no real need to upgrade / replace them very frequently. The only thing which might make you want to upgrade it is for a newer version of Android but frankly the people who care about that are few and far between.

I have a Kindle Fire 7 HDX and it's still going great several years on. Whilst I wouldn't choose a phone based on the Amazon ecosystem, for my tablet it works really well, integrating everything I want. That said, my phone can do everything my tablet can do and more, just on a smaller screen. This makes the tablet a choice often second to the phone which also explains why it is upgraded less frequently.

[excalibur1814]

When a tablet (Android/apple), any tablet, reaches the price of a standard laptop then it's reaching the arena of madness. Sure, I own an ipad mini 4, but as soon as I need to do anything of worth I reach for my desktop or laptop/Surface. Just look at the price of the iPad pro... utter madness no matter how nice they are.

Plus people already own the devices they like and, just like laptops/desktops, there's less need to change them every single year. Maybe the oems think that the general public are that dumb. Only phones to go and we'll have reached a nice situation. You can only sell the same crap to people for so long.

[ik9000]

You can only sell the same crap to people for so long.

and that there is why they design them to break. It's why modern boilers/kitchen mixers/ovens/insert any other white good aren't as long lasting as what we used to get in the 90s. Built-in obsolecence. VE parts quality to make things cheaper to buy, and also preserve your customer base for the long run.

[Bagpuss]

I'd like to update my Samsung Tab S Pro, but the equivalent model replacement, the Tab S2, still costs £330 nearly two years after it launched!!

Too much, I wouldn't pay a penny over £250 for one, given what I use it for (reading magazines) even if the 4:3 aspect ratio on the newer Tab S2 would be much nicer than the stretch 'o' vision 16:10, on my current tablet.

Kind of hoping they'll be on offer somewhere for Black Friday or new year sales.

[Wozza63]

Why buy an expensive tablet when I can get an ultrabook that can do so much more for the same price? Even sticking with Apple you can get a Macbook Air for not much more that can actually be productive.

[Output]

I'd imagine manufacturers are finding these results... hard to swallow.

[OilSheikh]

Thank God! Websites have beeen becoming s**te trying to accomodate tablets.

[Spud1]

I think a big part of the problem is that, despite being so many years on now, the tablet market has such a limited choice when it comes to "good" products. Android is still just not very well suited to tablets - with all it's features and improvements, and 80% of its apps targeted for phones..and that pretty much just leaves Apple, and it's iPads are expensive and have dropped in quality over the years. Apps are the big deal really - Apple simply has far, far greater tablet support within their app ecosystem.

I moved over to the Google ecosystem 4 years ago now, but i've still got an iPad Air 2 as my main tablet. There simply isn't a comparable Android powered device out there to replace it with - Samsung come closest but even their latest models are thicker, heavier and simply not as good. It's a shame as I would have swapped over when I changed my phone away from Apple had there been a comparable product out there.

As it is, my iPad will only be replaced by a Surface Book 2 when that comes out in a few weeks (I class that device as a tablet that can dock to be a laptop, not the other way around)..but thats only as i've saved up for nigh on 3 years to be able to afford one (given that they are £3k for one with a decent spec!!)

[iworrall]

TL;DR - Because everyone who wanted one, now has one?

[Flibb]

Unless your going up in size, new tablets offer little over ones a couple of years old. My oldest android tablet is a gen 1 Nexus 7, think its 2012/13. This is now pretty useless. More recently I picked up a Ipad mini 2 to run DJIs flight software, at around the same time I also got a new Lenovo tablet that cost £50. I find that as a usable device the android tablet suit me better than the ipad air, maybe because the ipad is the first device I have used on that ecosystem. Despite the ipad playing nicely with DJIs software, its terrible with the software that runs one of my telescope mounts. If I sell the multirotor I would get rid of the ipad with it. I do also have a couple of windows tablets / hybrids. I prefer them over apple or android, for both general browsing and also being able to run full windows software for stuff like astronomy, photography, etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

Supposedly devices shipped with Android Oreo will be easier to keep up to date, that could make tablets even longer lasting.

Part of the problem here might just be that none of the devices out there are all that impressive. My wife complains about her Hudl2 being slow and going into thermal throttling after as little as a few levels of Candy Crush, but I can't see any sanely priced Android tablets for sale. She won't do Apple, and the kids have tried Windows tablets and pretty much ignore them. I quite like my Nvidia tablet and use it a lot, but they don't seem to make them any more.

I think the Nintendo Switch shows there is a market here.

[gordon861]

I'm currently looking for a decent tablet for general use, I've tried the Chinese Ebay ones in the past and now avoid them. Have an old 2012 Nexus 7 which can't be upgraded without making it run like a absolute pig. Also, 7 inch is only a little larger than a phone really.

So in the market for a tablet for general use, don't want to spend too much as it's just a stand by device for when your sitting in front of the TV or in the garden and want use a comp without going to the main PC, just convenient. Want a 10 inch screen to make it a worthwhile option than the phone.

Walk into Currys last night to look at the currently available market and it's crap, no wonder people aren't buying the damn things. For around £200 (which is where I'm looking), the options are bad, half of the tablets only have 16GB and older versions of Android. They even still sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab E for £180, which is running 4.4 and only 8GB.

I have just bought a new mobile phone for £200 with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, why are there no tablets available with similar specs, without paying a fortune?

[3dcandy]

I think a big part of the problem is that, despite being so many years on now, the tablet market has such a limited choice when it comes to "good" products. Android is still just not very well suited to tablets - with all it's features and improvements, and 80% of its apps targeted for phones..and that pretty much just leaves Apple, and it's iPads are expensive and have dropped in quality over the years. Apps are the big deal really - Apple simply has far, far greater tablet support within their app ecosystem.

I moved over to the Google ecosystem 4 years ago now, but i've still got an iPad Air 2 as my main tablet. There simply isn't a comparable Android powered device out there to replace it with - Samsung come closest but even their latest models are thicker, heavier and simply not as good. It's a shame as I would have swapped over when I changed my phone away from Apple had there been a comparable product out there.

As it is, my iPad will only be replaced by a Surface Book 2 when that comes out in a few weeks (I class that device as a tablet that can dock to be a laptop, not the other way around)..but thats only as i've saved up for nigh on 3 years to be able to afford one (given that they are £3k for one with a decent spec!!)

My ipad has been utter rubbish. ios updates that break more than they fix and apps that don't work under later ios revisions are ten a plenty. For some an ipad isn't any better than an android tablet and the ecosystem has proved to be as bad if not worse

[shaithis]

I'm not surprised. I use mine less and less as each new phones display and apps get better. In fact, most of the quick searches I do these days I do using google now and don't even look at the screen.

In fact, I can't remember the last time I did anything with my tablet other than play a few games of Hearthstone....

[Biscuit]

Little reason to upgrade tablets once you have one so it isn't surprising that growth slows to a crawl.