BlackBerry CEO: Tablet Market Is Dying 564
Nerval's Lobster writes "BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins believes that tablets will be dead by 2018. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,' he told an interviewer at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. 'Maybe a big screen in your workplace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.' That may come as a surprise to Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, all of which have built significant tablet businesses over the past few years. Research firm Strategy Analytics suggested in a research note earlier this month that the global tablet market hit 40.6 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2013, a significant rise from the 18.7 million shipped in the same quarter last year. So why would Heins offer such a pessimistic prediction when everyone else — from the research firms to the tablet-makers themselves — seems so full-speed-ahead? It's easy to forget sometimes that BlackBerry has its own tablet in the mix: the PlayBook, which was released to quite a bit of fanfare in early 2011 but failed to earn iPad-caliber sales. Despite that usefulness to developers, however, the PlayBook has become a weak contender in the actual tablet market. If Heins is predicting that market's eventual demise, it could be a coded signal that he intends to pull BlackBerry out of the tablet game, focusing instead on smartphones. It wouldn't be the first radical move the company's made in the past year."
I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants an automobile? The form factor is terrible; the tiny wheels can hardly get through a foot of mud or ford a stream. You have to fill it up with "gas" constantly, instead of simply letting the horses wander around in your pasture.
No, there's simply no future in the automobile, once people try them out and find how limiting they really are.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
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A horse will not mow your lawn; it will eat all the grass [ufl.edu], down to the soil. You will be left with bare earth, with a few deposits of processed grass on it. I'm not sure I'd want my lawn to be like that.
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I think the argument is that a smartphone will one day be able to replace the tablet. Why do I need both a smart phone and a tablet when my smart phone already does everything my tablet does and more. I should just keep the smartphone instead.
But I think there is an important difference. Size. People like tables for some uses because they have a bigger screen than phones yet phones are useful for other purposes because they're smaller and more portable. But then again it might be possible to plug your phone
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That's exactly why products like a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or and Asus Padfone exist. They cater to the all in one approach many customers actually like.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet nowhere in his reply did he even mention Apple. He may be an "Apple fanboi", but that post doesn't smack of one to me.
I also disagree that tablets are a fad. I owned a netbook for about two months before it was sold because it was nearly unusable. Everything about it was horrible: 600px high screen resolution made web browsing laughable, near-unusable trackpad (this was a Dell, others may be better/worse), the small keyboard made text input a chore (especially the punctuation keys), and so-so battery life.
Tablets are much more usable *to me* than my netbook ever was. My first tablet was much more pleasurable to read webpages on (in fact, I still prefer using Pulse to keep up with the tech sites I read every day to using multiple tabs in a browser), and its text input was easier because the soft keys were larger than the keys on the netbook. Yes, it lacked tactile feedback, but I was used to that within a week. I don't usually hammer out many multi-paragraph emails or forum comments on it, but I have no problem doing so, if necessary.
I'm not saying they're for everyone, but for me my tablet is my go-to device for 95% of my non work-related "computer" usage (the other 5% is a custom-built computer for gaming and photo editing.) I've even stopped carrying my laptop (a sub-3lb ultra-book) to and from work everyday.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
SuperKendall is an Apple fanboi and will make any semi-plausible argument to support his master. Don't take his arguments seriously, he's just here to sell things.
Funny how a person who's views fit reality (that people prefer iPads over netbooks) is a "fanboy" that shouldn't be taken seriously.
No, actually it's not funny. It's sad, to be quite honest. Why are Slashdot nerds so angry and hateful?
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a technologist. You are an idiot. I serve no master save myself; you serve any master that will have you.
There's something mentally amiss with a large swath of the population here. They call others "fanbois" (with the extra-gay 'i' for good measure), but all they do is spew hatred for the things they don't like.
We're all supposed to be nerds here. Android is awesome, Linux is awesome. But so is Windows and Macs and iPads and all that. And if you happen to simply like something that is not sanctioned by the holy order of a minority here on Slashdot, you're the "fanboy"!
Nerd/geek is supposed to be all about being excited about tech (or other things, but quite commonly tech). I don't understand why all the negativity. I get that there's going to be rivalries to some extent, but here (and a few other places, like Engadget and Google+), the Linux/Android fans are like absurdly exaggerated caricatures of the supposed Apple "fanbois" they are always complaining about!
This even goes to the extreme of Linux enthusiasts hating Ubuntu, or Android fans calling the Raspberry Pi useless. What the hell guys?!
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, I'm with you. Unfortunately this kind of tribal subdivision is as old as human nature. You should be more alarmed that it's exactly the same behaviour exhibited by anyone profoundly obstinate about just about anything, most obviously politics. Every flamewar since the beginning of Usenet has succinctly demonstrated that the average geek is just a gorilla with a few right answers.
Of course, not everyone likes being called a gorilla, so you may want to insert some other primate or even an early hominid.
Price, multitasking, mouse support (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference between netbooks/chromebooks & a tablet? One has a keyboard attached... one uses a bluetooth keyboard.
That and 10" netbooks tended to be cheaper than a 10" tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a case to keep them together. And netbooks shipped with an operating system that supports tiled or overlapping windows, unlike tablets whose operating systems inherit the all maximized all the time window management policy from the smartphones that they were originally designed for. And when you do need a more precise pointing device, there's more of a culture of using an external mouse with a netbook than with a tablet.
Re:Price, multitasking, mouse support (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between netbooks/chromebooks & a tablet? One has a keyboard attached... one uses a bluetooth keyboard.
That and 10" netbooks tended to be cheaper than a 10" tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a case to keep them together. And netbooks shipped with an operating system that supports tiled or overlapping windows, unlike tablets whose operating systems inherit the all maximized all the time window management policy from the smartphones that they were originally designed for. And when you do need a more precise pointing device, there's more of a culture of using an external mouse with a netbook than with a tablet.
And netbooks got their asses handed to them by the iPad. Why do you think that is? Is it because everyone is stupid and will come to their senses (i.e., somehow come to agree with you instead of having their own preferences)? Or is it because the things that you decry are things that they either don't mind, or specifically prefer?
Honestly, nine times out of ten, if a nerd makes nothing but technical claims against some product, it's almost always guaranteed to be a success. That's because the things we care about are outside of the norm.
A lot of geeks seemed to think that because computers went from nerd to commonplace over the past two decades, that means people all became geeks themselves. They didn't. Most people don't actually want computers (or tablets or phones, etc.) for the same reasons we do. Yes, there's some overlap, but the things that stand out to us do not stand out to them.
People like you often complain that the iPad is a "consumption device". Well, guess what? Most people want to consume on their devices. That's why they have them. Consume and communicate, and engage in "lite" forms of productions (i.e., share photos with Instagram filters). They don't want a mouse. They don't want Blender 3D. They don't want gcc and vim.
It's hilarious to watch geeks extoll the virtues of the netbook over the tablet as an argument that the iPad is a fad, but the netbook is the real product people want. Every quarter, tens of millions of people prove that assertion ass-backwards. I always thought geeks were supposed to be smart, so why do so many of them have such a hard time noticing this contradiction? A contradiction that is easily remedied by a simple adjustment of a few basic assumptions?
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one sucks for content creation and the other does not
Which one would that be? In my experience, they both pretty much suck for content creation.
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Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants an automobile? The form factor is terrible; the tiny wheels can hardly get through a foot of mud or ford a stream. You have to fill it up with "gas" constantly, instead of simply letting the horses wander around in your pasture.
No, there's simply no future in the automobile, once people try them out and find how limiting they really are.
I heard something extremely similar in a discussion recently about the Tesla Model S, and it was in all seriousness. "foot of mud" and "ford a stream" was replaced with "drive a 1500 mile road trip" and "pull a trailer", replace "gas" with "charging". There was totally no way they could possibly have a future once people found out how limiting they really are. You can people said what you just wrote in full seriousness back in the day.
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Except that chargers are not all over the place, and I'm sure there are plenty of places where you can go 1500 miles without having the opportunity to charge. What's more, even if you do have a charger available, due to the lengthy time it takes to charge, you might not have the luxury of plugging it in.
It's less of an issue for gasoline and diesel cars because of the ubiquitous gas stations and the short period of time it takes to refill the gas tank.
I'm sure that in the long run it will be solved, they so
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Many people live together in social units called "families" and may own more than one car. Most families don't need multiple cars that can go on several hundred mile road trips on a regular basis. The majority of people's drive is to and from work and the store, which electric vehicles have more than enough range to accomplish.
What will probably end up happening is families will get 1 expensive to run gas powered car for road trips (and commuting for one of the spouses), and another electric vehicles for
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Ug no like horses. Ug walk. Ug think horses only good for meat.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Informative)
The tablet isn't "automobile vs horse". Neither smartphones nor laptops could be considered "horses" and those are what bookend the tablet market.
The basic issue is that people want something small and easy to carry with a lot of on-the-go features like telephone, texting, and GPS like a smartphone. However, they also want something they can sit down and compose documents or browse the web on for long periods of time. They also want something that can replace a book, an MP3 player, and a television. This is all possible because all of these tasks involve using the Internet in today's world (with true 4G LTE cellular networks become a true IP-based network that is connected to and routable by the Internet), and tablets take advantage of this.
Tablets, like netbooks before them, are an attempt to merge semi-portable laptop computers and semi-multipurpose smartphones into a single superdevice. I would continue to argue that tablets are still shitty devices, however. They're only slightly less shitty than netbooks, and that's why they're doing well. Apple may have understood that tablets are shitty smartphone-laptops, however, and instead positioned the iPad as a third device primarily for media consumption (music/movies/limited games/books/web/web-like apps) which is really all the device does well. This has turned out to be a new market, which is why the segment has seen such explosive growth. One of the mistake market analysts make is that they think tablets replace laptops or smartphones, when, in reality, they merely provide feature subsets of both. Certainly, some users will find they no longer need a laptop with a tablet, but I don't think this is that significant.
The other mistake is that the market analysts have forgotten the difference between developing and developed markets. Established markets like laptop computers and cellphones (smartphones are overtaking and replacing regular phones, rather than being an emerging market) have shown stagnant growth because they're developed and saturated markets. The majority of sales are for replacement devices rather than new owners. Tablets, OTOH, represent an emerging market, with many people purchasing their first tablet. It's difficult to speculate how long it will take for the tablet market to saturate, but it's clear that what was once thought to be just a segment of the computer market is instead a completely different market altogether.
What may happen is that families that currently own multiple laptops will instead own a single laptop and multiple tablets instead. I could see that, particularly if tablets stop being so strictly linked to a single person as if they're a smartphone or internal organ.
Let's say this is how things are now. Assume a family of two adults and two or more children:
Each adult owns a single-user smartphone.
Children share one to two plain cellphones (or hand-me-down smartphones).
Each adult owns one single-user laptop.
Each family owns one multi-user desktop.
Each family owns one large screen TV, and two or more modest screen TVs.
Here's what I can see happening in the future:
Each adult will own a single-user smartphone.
Each child will own a cheap single-user smartphone.
Each family will have one multi-user laptop.
Each family will have one or two large screen displays (either TVs or computers primarily for video capabilities).
Each family will have two or three multi-user tablets.
See how the tablets provide coverage between televisions and laptops?
Personally, I think it's equally as likely that this happens:
Each adult will own a single-user smartphone.
Each child will own a cheap single-user smartphone.
Each family will have two or more multi-user or single-user laptops.
Each family will have one or two large screen displays (either TVs or computers primarily for video capabilities).
Each family will have one multi-user tablet.
That's more expensive, but also far more useful for many people.
Perhap
Re:I agree (Score:4)
You'd be right, except tablets are a step back in terms of usability and performance
Ask a two year old to draw a picture on a laptop, then a tablet. It seems you have assumptions that need adjusting.
Some writers also prefer tablets (with keyboards) because they have a more pure writing experience (which also had be had with some full-screen writing applications for desktops).
I would say that tablets are light-years ahead in usability for non-technical people. I have to help my mother with a laptop, I have never had to help her with an iPad. It's pretty obvious which is more usable.
Before the Apple Haters start whining again, the same would be true of a Fire...
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However, I wish Microsoft thought this way and produced separate tablet and desktop operation systems.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree completely. Tablets are a fad. The form factor is terrible and the functionality is lacking. I think that most people are going to continue using phones and laptops.
Laptops are bulky and heavy. Netbooks offer a terrible user experience (mostly thanks to Microsoft forcing lousy specs on vendors as a prerequisite for Windows Starter licensing).
I've taken my iPad with me on my last few business trips. It was light and with a big enough display for comfortable use without being too big (or too small like smartphone displays). (Although I'm not happy Apple has already abandoned updates on my not-even-3-years-old iPad 1 -- might have to consider an Android tablet next time.)
Not sure where the market will go, but tablets aren't a fad for me, they're just the best compromise of all the alternatives (when traveling, at least).
Re: I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
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My Nexus 7 flashed up an update to the operating system about ten minutes after I bought it. My wife's Kobo Arc has had two system updates since Christmas.
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I've got news for you... Most Android manufacturers stop providing updates the day their devices hit the market. If your sole concern is that yoy want a tablet that is going to have updates for years to come, there are a variety of Windows slates on the market.
I've gotten burned by Microsoft enough times over the years (decades, actually) that I fundamentally don't trust them anymore.
That being said, next time I'll be more careful to research devices where I can reasonably expect they'll get updates for at least 5+ years.
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Which, as has already been pointed out, does NOT include most (any?) Android devices.
BTW, I agree with your main point.
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Updates for legacy Android devices are handled by the Cyanogen team, and others in the modding community. It's a nuisance, but less of a nuisance than installing Windows upgrades. Here is your list of supported devices [cyanogenmod.org].
BTW: Android for tablets is barely over two years old. The pace of change in tablet devices is so swift that you're unlikely to be able to run any device longer than that before it's hopelessly obsolete. The first few tablets were pretty bad. The top end this year will have 8-core 64bit
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I think that's hard to say for sure. Phones are getting bigger and bigger and you can get some now that I would classify as a tablet anyways. So if that's what your suggesting then yes the tablets now are going to go away. I highly doubt it though. They aren't usually good for work devices but as technology in them keeps improving they are turning out some really awesome features. The note 10.1(I currently own), surface, lenovo, and a few others have wacom tech in them. While it's not as nice to use a
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AKA "phablet". Yes, it's dumb, but it's widespread.
Re:I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, that's an valid opinion, but I don't agree with you.
My tablet isn't used for work, so the form factor is actually quite nice for what I use it for (surf the web, movies, email when I travel). And the functionality is exactly what I want out of it.
There's just some stuff I have no interest in doing on my phone. I like the bigger size of the fondle-slab. My phone is too small to watch a movie or read a book.
I expect you and Mr. Heins will be proven wrong over time. BlackBerry's tablet was crap, but that doesn't mean people who own tablets don't like them.
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Tablets obviate laptops for all but those who genuinely need a mobile work environment; e.g. students, work-at-home folk, etc. Plus, tablets do "mobile" better than a laptop. Try traveling on vacation with a laptop as compared to a tablet or looking up that actor from that thing while sitting on your couch, or reading a recipe you found online with a laptop. I've got a laptop as well as a tablet, but I will RARELY if ever move mine now that I have the tablet.
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I'm not so sure about that. I could see something like the Asus Transformer becoming the standard in a few years.
The main problem that Tablets have, IMHO, is that they are an awkward compromise that nobody has really figured out how to make work. Without a keyboard, the input tasks for text take forever compared with touch typing, and you have to give up a portion of the screen in order to have the onscreen keyboard. Because they need to be so small, you have to give up processing power and the ability to r
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I do like the basic idea behind the Transformer, and I think that's going to be much more common in the future as it seems to be a pretty good compromise that actually has real world utility.
I have a Transformer, and while it seems like a good compromise, the end result is that it's both a poor tablet (e.g. too big and heavy to hold comfortably) and a poor netbook (e.g. horrible unbalanced due to having the heavy components behind the screen).
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The form factor is perfect for:
- Reading books/blocks of text/PDFs
- Watching media
- Calendar/Scheduling
- Mail Reading (and light replying)
- Light web browsing
- Puzzle/Word games
All of the above can be done on phones or laptops, but the 7-10" screen is pretty much the sweet spot for reading and watching media alone (or for two). It will hold it's place, but I think the market for higher priced versions will decline. I had no problem dropping $200 on a Nexus 7, but when I see $500-700 for an iPad I start to
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Well I think part of that is the UI in place. Many SW devs will in effect replace the mouse pointer with the finger on a tablet, which simply will not do, and the SW ends up being hard to use for any length of time.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like comparing the number of people who own music versus the number of people who play music. "Content creation" hasn't been on the radar of most people since pre-recorded media has been made available at a good price point. I remember being about 12 or 13 years old with a Commodore 64. Of the 6 other kids I knew at the time who owned computers about 5 of us could code simple games and such. That's roughly 85%. How many kids can code today? The difference is that for a 12 year old pre-recorded media was too expensive and my parents weren't shelling out 20 dollars for the latest SSI title every other week.
Re:I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
"Content Creation" doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as coding or painting or musical composition. Your post and mine are both "content creation," and I don't know about you, but typing more than a couple of sentences in a row on a tablet touchscreen gets old quick.
I don't personally think tablets are going away, but I think the market may shrink going forward for a number of reasons. When the iPad first appeared, they did three amazing things that laptop users immediately noticed: they turned on instantly, they were small and light, and they had high-quality screens. Tablet UI considerations aside, those were areas in which the tablet absolutely trashed existing laptop hardware in user experience. If you just wanted to read or watch a movie, and you had a laptop and a tablet within reach, the tablet would get you there faster.
Fast-forward to now, and laptops have caught up. SSDs killed the boot advantage, and new form factors made possible by the same techniques that worked in the tablets have closed the size gap. If I can get an 11" laptop that does "real computer" stuff, boots instantly, and runs quietly and comfortably in my lap... I don't really have a use-case for the tablet anymore.
In short, it was worth the inconvenience of trying to type on a touchscreen when tablets had so many other advantages-- but those advantages have all either gone away or shrunk considerably. I imagine some folks will probably reconsider their tablet. Not all, but some.
Not that old chestnut (Score:3)
The major issue is that tablets are great content consumption devices for watching video or reading but piss poor content creation devices.
The real issue is that anyone still thinks that.
People who actually own tablets know they can be great for creation also.
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In my experience, the only people who make those sort of statements were either paid a metric fuckton to do such a project by a tablet maker so they can get some news ... and people that are so bad at 'creating content' that the tablet being a shitty way to do it is going to have no measurable effect on their output.
Re:Not that old chestnut (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree, unless you're plugging a keyboard into it, they are piss poor as a means of creating content. At which point, you have a device that's barely any smaller than a laptop and quite a bit slower.
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Citation needed.
Or at least be kind and specify what sort of content are you generating on a tablet and works better than on a computer. I can't think of any, so please, by all means, enlighten me.
And I'm serious. Not sarcastic or anything. I consider buying a tablet but so far I steered away from it, because I don't think it would add value to my life. I have a laptop, I have a smartphone, how would a tablet be enhancing my life?
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David Hockney:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hockney+ipad&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB504GB504&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_C6AUfCYNsil0QX-jICABw&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1267&bih=645 [google.co.uk]
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Citation needed....I can't think of any, so please, by all means, enlighten me.
And if you can't think of any, it must not exist, right? Yes, I am being sarcastic.
Painting/drawing is one category. Some types of photo manipulation or collages, photography and videography (taking the pics/vids, not the editing), almost anything that benefits from multi-touch (zooming, twisting, etc.). In general, types of creation or manipulation that are best accomplished by strokes of fingers or hands rather than typing or tapping. Some audio content creation and editing is also better suited to the mu
Re:Not that old chestnut (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. This is the distinction that so many of the "tablets suck for content creation" crowd are missing.
If you're going to be coding, work with a device that has an interface designed around a keyboard. If you're going to be writing articles, do the same.
If you're going to be painting digitally, find yourself something that works with a stylus. Previously, people used to attach a Wacom peripheral to their PCs to accomplish this task, but tablets are already owned by millions of people and can basically do this sort of thing right out of the box.
For musicians, especially amateurs, the tablet can be a complete game-changer, since it can replace the need to purchase hundreds or thousands of dollars in instruments and other tools. Clearly it won't be replacing the need for a physical violin or a physical piano anytime soon, but for stuff like synths, beat boxes, or just quick compositions that could use an instrument the musician doesn't have available, a tablet can fill that gap quite capably for a fraction of the price of purchasing those items individually, and its touchscreen interface is far better-suited for those uses than a mouse and keyboard are.
If you're going to be taking or editing videos or pictures, a tablet won't be replacing a professional-grade setup, but for amateurs the tools that are available are already quite good, and a lot of the actions (e.g. for videos: scrubbing through a video, selecting a portion of the video, or establishing the path of a panning shot; for images: cropping, zooming, or rotating) come more naturally with fingers on a touchscreen than they do with a mouse and keyboard hooked up to a screen that sits in front of you.
Tablets don't suck for content creation. In fact, they're quite good at it. But they're general purpose tools that will rarely be better than purpose-built systems, especially once you start to talk about professionals and the incredibly specific needs that they have.
are you kidding? (Score:2)
I'd say they're okay for creation at best...at least the kind that I do.
Given the choice I'd *far* rather use a full-sized keyboard/mouse and big monitor (1920x1200 but I want to go bigger) for just about anything creative--writing code, retouching photos, editing video, or even just writing this comment.
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I don't know about that, even my grandmother used to use her computer for email, which was much less efficient on a tablet than on even an entry level netbook.
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I have to prop my tablet up on a pillow
OH!! the HUMANITY!! ;)
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Netbooks were a fad, and the reason for that is that you can get an i3 laptop now for pretty much the same price you'd pay for a well-specced netbook just a few years ago. Personally, I had high hopes for the Transformer type of computer, if only there was a good OS for it. Perhaps Linux with KDE5.
Should be in reverse! (Score:5, Funny)
World to Blackberry: In five years there'll be no reason to own a Blackberry.
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You don't really own a blackberry, you just rent it. Eventually you will poop it out.
hahaha. oh they're not joking (Score:5, Funny)
I might be able to take their word seriously if they didn't paint the blackberry playbook in a positive light at all. After running one of the worst launches in history, no wonder that thing fell flat on it's face. My favorite review said something along the lines of "It's like paying $200 to see Bruce Springsteen and having to settle for a homeless guy in the subway air guitaring it"
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And this is why BlackBerry will go out of business (Score:5, Insightful)
BlackBerry seems incapable of judging where there market is going. That's why they were blindsided when the iPhone came out. They still had a chance to adapt, but they pretty much pretended like the iPhone didn't exist. Even after Android came out they had their heads in the sand. By the time they finally woke up, it was too late.
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Hahahaha! (Score:5, Insightful)
From the company bleeding money for the last three years because it has absolutely no idea what customers want, comes the grand declaration "Customers won't want tablets."
Maybe if Blackberry had released a tablet that had full access to the Android market, they might have sold some. My daughter got a playbook from her boyfriend's parents a few months ago, and while the hardware is nothing to sneeze at, the fact that you couldn't even install the Netflix app was a revelation to me as to just how clueless RIM/Blackberry really is.
Re: Hahahaha! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hahahaha! (Score:4, Informative)
From the company bleeding money for the last three years
You may want to check your facts. You couldn't possibly be more wrong.
Three words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Screen Real Estate.
There is some stuff you Just. Cant Do. On a phone. The screen is too small.
IF his idea that phones will be a little bigger, do we really want to look like an idiot walking around with a giant brick to our head? Or have to wory about always using a bluetooth earpiece? And where will you stick that larger than you prefer phone?
IMHO an iPhone 5 is starting to get a little too big. The larger samsungs are even worse.
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I suspect his argument is about physical keyboards rather than size. Maybe they have a plan to replace their Playbook with something that has a keyboard.
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do we really want to look like an idiot walking around with a giant brick to our head?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRLRjKCGHek [youtube.com]
P.S. My favorite bit is at the very end of the video.
In other news... (Score:2)
...Apple CEO Tim Cook believes that RIM will be dead by 2018. 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to buy a BlackBerry anymore'.
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Is there any compelling reason to buy a BlackBerry now?
They've always been heavily focused on business users who need to view Excel documents on their phone and connect to a corporate Exchange server.
But for everybody else, there's plenty of other options besides BlackBerry. And my wife's experience with the PlayBook I bought her -- well, that isn't exactly making me think I'd ever buy anything from them again, because it didn't provide the best user experience.
This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Personal experience (Score:5, Informative)
I've had several smart phones but recently picked up my first tablet. I do most of my smart phone stuff on the tablet now. I'm now looking at the end of my current cell contract and realizing I'd be better off going to a basic cell.
I have an Asus Transformer TF700T tablet with a detachable keyboard. I can VNC remote desktop. I can access SMB shares. I can game, surf, and do stuff I never would do on a phone (or Blackberry).
The thing in my house that's collecting dust? My old dell laptop. If I need to do real work I'm on my desktop. It's been months since I opened the screen on my laptop. I'm going to wipe it and give it to the kids. There's your dying form factor.
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Re:Personal experience (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've taken apart a phone or tablet, or even a notebook, you know that the "computer" part of it only occupies a small circuit board. This part is going to continue to get smaller (e.g. Raspberry Pi and MK808). My prediction is in the future, your phone or maybe even your watch will contain the CPU, RAM, and storage. A "tablet" will just be a 7"-12" screen and digitizer which connects wirelessly with your phone. A "laptop" will just be the "tablet" plus a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Cmdr Taco, is that you? (Score:4, Funny)
Did he hire Cmdr Taco to perform his market research?
Says a Man Out-of-Touch with the Education Market (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree (Score:2)
Google Goggles (Score:2)
Are tablets going to go away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the tablet market isn't dying. It could possibly be described as a bubble at the moment, but that doesn't mean that that sales are going to disappear within the next five years.
The issue is more that tablets are essentially as powerful as they'll need to be for the next five years, if not longer. They're designed to be highly portable devices that can access the internet and be used as ebook readers, but are large enough to be easier to read from than a smartphone. Aside from the people who need to have the new shiny, most people who own or are thinking of buying a tablet will only upgrade when it can no longer handle their needs, much like Windows XP computers.
Re:Are tablets going to go away? (Score:4, Insightful)
You've got it nailed.
Those that have a first gen tablet may upgrade to reduce lag, but everyone thats buying one right now? Its entirely possible they won't need to upgrade except in cases of breaking the existing one for 5+ years. You're going to hit saturation similar to whats happening with desktop and laptop PCs right now, except I believe the total saturation number is much lower than for PCs and we're going to hit that number much sooner because the days of needing to upgrade a tablet every 2-3 years... never existed in the first place.
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Now that I think about it, I was making a recommendation to a friend about which iPad to get and I told him that either of the last two models would be fine for his needs, as would the mini. Never occurred to me that this could be a limiting factor on the ultimate size of the annual market once it is close to fully saturated. Phones, at
I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
I think tablets are fine for the niche they fill. They make great little consumption devices that are somewhat inexpensive, and handle web content just fine. I have a few sitting around at home that we can just pick up and check email with, or my kid can go watch netflix on the bed, or whatever. They certainly aren't going to be replaces computers for anyone but the most casual of consumers, but they do fill a technology gap very nicely.
One thing that he hints at, which I agree with, is that tablets aren't going to change too much in the next five years. Overall sales will level off once everyone has one, and I do suspect the wifi-only versions will be the primary sellers after that. Prices will probably settle in the 100-200 dollar range, at most, with plenty of $50 options. They'll basically take the same route that MP3 players took 10 years ago.
Translation (Score:2)
tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
They were in star trek. They'll be around. Everyone likes phones for communication. Tablets will replace books eventually. Tablets will replace phones even.
Think about a tablet with a flexible screen. One that you can roll up. Now think about a cell phone type stick device that you can put to your ear. Now think about pulling out a display for when you need to use it's screen. And then when you're done just let it roll back into the device.
Welcome to the next tablet device.
Blackberry is completely short sighted.
Cheap tablets can be useful. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a couple of cheap tablets with the Allwinner A10 SOC. One is running Ice Cream Sandwich, and one is running Jelly Bean. The Ice Cream Sandwich one could be running Jelly Bean, if it were worth the bother. So, they are reasonably up to date. Use? One is used mostly as a glorified remote control for MPD[1]. But it also lets me know when I have emails (I go to a real computer to deal with the emails) and is used as a clock. The other is used as a clock, and both a MPD remote control and streamer. Very useful they are. I can only afford to use them like this because they are reasonably inexpensive. (I even have an old Nokia N800 in the shed (garage) which I use as a MPD remote control and streamer.)
They are fine when used in this way, and I think that the touch interface helps to make them ideal MPD remote controls.
[1] I used to use it for steaming as well, but now have a Raspberry PI with pulseaudio in place of it, so I can have the music in that room in sync with the music in other rooms.
Best wishes,
Bob
Not sure I agree with this.... (Score:2)
Keep in mind...this assessment is coming from a company that released a tablet...without the ability to use email on it. You couldn't use what is arguably the best feature on the Blackberry...rock solid email integration. I used to think that tablets were going to be a fad too. But I'm seeing more and more of them and at the end of the day, most people are consumers of content not producers. Sure, tablets suck for coding but how many people are coding vs. the general public? A very small percentage I would
Phablets over tablets (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he's right. Have you noticed that phones are getting bigger and tablets are getting smaller? I think phones are about to eat tablets in the same way they ate other stand along devices. People don't want two devices. They want one.
Personally, I hate the idea.
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My kids use the tablets at my house. I use my smartphone/desktop and my wife uses her phone or laptop. The tablet is a convenience, but totally not necessary.
Phone with data service: almost necessary in today's wired world. Desktop/laptop, this where the large-task computer work is done. Lots of horse power, long lasting battery (laptop) and tonnes of screen real estate.
Phone: required
Heavy duty cpu (laptop/desktop): required
Tablet: convenience.
It's not impossible... (Score:3)
...if something like an upgraded/improved Google Glass takes off in time.
It's hard to beat the subjective screen size of a thing that draws on your eye.
If it's got eye tracking and is combined either with peering with other devices that have tolerable input mechanisms (phone? keyboard?) or with something Kinect-like, then sure, physical tablets may become less common.
I doubt that's what they mean, though.
Tasteful Joke (Score:3)
Large screens will die ... (Score:3)
tablets are not a fad, but... (Score:3)
The tablet market is not dying, but I think the device is still looking for a purpose beyond casual consumption of content. I'm desperate to switch from a laptop to a tablet, especially in the field, but the apps for content creation just aren't there yet. Android and iPad devices have the touch paradigm down very well, but the apps oriented towards content creation still aren't much beyond "let's take a picture of Fred and then draw a moustache on him. Hee hee."
Remember those futurist commercials a few years ago where someone is doing serious design work with just gestures on a surface? That's what's (still) missing.
For content consumers, tablets are sexy and convenient. For content creators, tablets are still unrealized potential. And I can see where people, frustrated by what they *could* do but still don't, could start to be seeing them as a passing fad.
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We use it for media consumption primarily. Don't want to drag your laptop to bed for reading a couple web pages, articles, Facebook, or checking your e-mail? Tablet is nice. Want to just sit on the couch and read some articles, e-mail, or Facebook? Tablet is nice. How about reading PDFs? Tablet is nice. What about when you're out and about and just want something for the occasional downtime or coffee shop? Tablet is nice.
Phones could fill this niche, too, and I know many people that use their phone
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I use it when I want to get information quickly. I can get to my emails or to a website in less than a second from picking it up, whereas with a laptop it takes maybe 20-30 seconds if it is on standby, or a couple of minutes if it is switched off. Yes you can do these things on a phone, but the bigger screen does make a difference. If I see an email that requires a reply of more than a few words, then I will get out my laptop or go over to the desktop to compose the reply on a proper keyboard.
I agree the
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One of the big reasons I bought a Nexus 7 is because we get a helluva lot of PDFs where I work, and I don't want to print them all off or drag my notebook in to every meeting. I installed a VPN client and a file system browser on my Nexus that allows me to get on to the file server and directly access PDFs. The Adobe PDF android client is good enough for that purpose. I do quite a bit of email on it, have an ereader and do most of my leisure reading on it. It's a handy device with a long battery life. I lik