Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over
Back in 2011, I was having an all-consuming love affair with tablets. At the time, I was the first-ever head of mobile at Netflix. I saw tablets in my sleep, running apps that would control homes, entertain billions and dutifully chug away at work. Tablets, I was convinced, were a third device category, a tweener that would fill the vacuum between a phone and a laptop. I knew that was asking a lot — at the time, however, I didn’t know just how much.
I wasn’t the only one swooning in the presence of the iPad and its imitators. Everyone was getting in on the love fest. The typically sober analysts over at Gartner were going ballistic with their shipment predictions for the iPad, and a flurry of soon-to-be-launched Android tablets. Amazon (Kindle Fire), Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet), HP (TouchPad running webOS) and even BlackBerry (PlayBook) all rushed into the market to take on Apple, which commanded 70 percent of the tablet market one year after Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPad. On the software side, startups like Flipboard, tech giants like Adobe and even large enterprises like Genentech were quickly assembling teams to take advantage of this new platform.
Now — three years and 225 million tablets later — I’m starting to see how misplaced that passion was.
The tablet couldn’t possibly shoulder all the expectations people had for it. Not a replacement for your laptop or phone — but kinda. Something you kick back with in the living room, fire up at work and also carry with you everywhere — sort of. Yes, tablets have sold in large numbers, but rather than being a constant companion, like we envisioned, most tablets today sit idle on coffee tables and nightstands. Simply put, our love for them is dying.GigOm argues the contra point:
In some ways, I shouldn’t be surprised — the tablet has let me down before. A decade ago, I was at Microsoft trying to convince both consumers and big companies to buy tablets. A number of hardware manufacturers were partnering with Microsoft to finance and market the development of devices running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition — a mouthful, yes, and not many customers were interested in even taking a bite.
We teamed up with HP, Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu, all of whom spent millions alongside Microsoft, and failed to create a bona fide category at the time. Why? “Tablet PCs,” as they were known, required a stylus (versus today’s touch-interaction model), and more importantly, only had a few tablet-optimized apps. We now know that’s a recipe for disaster.
But a few years later, it seemed that the world had changed, and the tablet was finally going to live up to all its promise. At Netflix, the tablet was stealing time from the browser with increasing speed month after month. To take advantage of that shift, I focused our entire team’s efforts on a complete redesign of the tablet app. We introduced a slew of features that took advantage of the screen size and touch interface. It was, if I may say, beautiful.
Post-launch, the new app significantly increased retention and streaming hours. It won reviewer praise, barely missing out on winning the Best Tablet App of 2011 at the Crunchies — it was a hit. And then it seemed, as soon as it had arrived, the tablet lost its momentum....MORE
4 reasons the tablet market is far from dead
Summary: Just four years in and already some are saying the tablet market has peaked. It’s easy to draw that conclusion if you look at slowing and seasonal sales numbers but there are several reasons it’s too soon to dismiss the potential of tablets.
I’ve been ill and mostly in bed since Wednesday of last week. The few times I was actually online I picked up the tablet from my nightstand.
Apparently, I’m using the wrong device. According to a guest article on Re/Code, “our love for the tablet is dying.”
The thesis comes from Zal Bilimoria, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Simply looking at the tablet sales trend, which is up but with a slowing growth rate, it’s easy to suggest we’ve hit “peak tablet.”
But I don’t buy that for several reasons.
1. Unless there’s disruption ahead, we’re early in the product life-cycle
Any time you have a popular new product class, you can expect fast growth at first. It’s what I’d call the “easy growth,” and it’s what the tablet market has enjoyed since 2010. This is the result of early adopters and product buzz.
Additional growth is going to come from people who more carefully evaluate their budgets and need for a tablet. Some will instead hang on to their old computer a little longer or spend their money on a smartphone over a tablet because it provides nearly ubiquitous connectivity and is portable. For these people, tablets aren’t a necessity. They’re a luxury item, for lack of a better term.
That’s not out of the ordinary in any non-necessary technology product life-cycle that’s not even four years old yet. I’d argue that smartphones are more of a necessity due to their connectivity and voice communications support; that’s why smartphone sales continue to accelerate more than four years after their introduction. Note: There are some signs of a slowing growth rate for smartphones, at least at the high-end, seven years after the first iPhone.
With 361. 3 million tablets sold in the last two years alone according to IDG — Bilimoria suggests only 225 million tablets have been sold in the last three years — clearly there’s an established tablet market. For it to progress beyond the easy growth, it’s going to take time for mindsets to change about what computing is. Many tasks typically reserved for a traditional PC can be done on a tablet but not all are convinced. Chromebooks face the same scrutiny from people who think computing can only be done on a computer.
2. Changes in mobile broadband pricing will help
Bilimoria rightly notes that most tablets sold are Wi-Fi-only devices. That’s been the case since the iPad launched, but relatively recent changes to mobile broadband services are likely to change that ratio. Take T-Mobile’s offer of 200 MB of free 4G data for life with a tablet as an example. No, you can’t do much with that amount of data but it comes in handy for emergency or limited uses.
I’ve bought at least a dozen tablets in the past several years — don’t chastise me: it’s my job — but nearly all of them were Wi-Fi models. This time around, I bought an iPad Air with LTE because of the free and inexpensive data. Instead of sitting at home with the other tablets, I take the Air with me nearly everywhere.
Here’s another example. When tablets with integrated mobile broadband launched, Apple shook up the market with pay-per-use pricing. You could purchase a few gigabytes of data for $30 or $50 and use it as needed; no contract required.
That model is still available but the advent of mobile share plans from the two largest operators in the U.S. made it even cheaper. In 2012, AT&T and Verizon created data sharing plans with the ability to add a tablet for $10 per month. With changes like this more consumers could opt for 4G tablets, which raises the value of the device thanks to everywhere computing....MORE
