back to article Thought tab sales were in the toilet this year? Hah! Wait for next

Slablet sales will be stuck in a U-bend next year and it may take a re-think from the manufacturers before they can be flushed out again. A forecast from Taiwan-based TrendForce indicates tab shipments will decline 3.5 per cent in 2015 to 185.6 million units, the first backwards motion since Apple launched the iPad. “We …

  1. ecofeco Silver badge

    Many reasons

    To be sure, there are many reason. The best reason I've seen so far is due to phones getting bigger.

    My experience with tabs is their fragility. Just as easily broken as phones if not more so and just as big a pain the arse to get fixed.

    The 3rd reason for sure is price. I can buy a very nice phone or a usable laptop for the price of a tablet.

    Various reasons after that are lack of keyboard and portability, Yes portability. How exactly do you carry one around? Not in your pocket, that's for sure. Buy a case? Obviously, only now you are getting into laptop accessory territory so why not just buy a laptop for about the same price but with more power? ...and it comes with a keyboard?

    I like tablets. I think they are very cool, but they were never meant to be anything other than a very large niche market.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You can't take the anal out of analyst

    A piece of tech comes along, solves a problem (scope and reality of problem not necessarily relevant), matures, gets commoditized and sells bucket loads.

    Subsequent releases solve fewer problems, possibly even adding more.

    Sales begin to slow from crazy growth rates. Sometimes changing its color helps here, for a while.

    Soon everyone who wants one has one, that meets most of their needs so sales decline.

    For some unknown reason unexplored by analyst experts, Captain F. Obvious takes an extended break aboard the No Shit Sherlock, leaving analyst "experts" trying and apparently suceeding in selling "insightful" predictions and analysis of falling sales.

    I'm in the wrong job , erm, magic quadrant.

    1. Gerhard Mack

      Re: You can't take the anal out of analyst

      You left out the part where they took the initial crazy growth, drew a straight line upward and declared that we would all replace our laptops and desktops with tablets.

  3. Robert E A Harvey

    Yep

    Got one, don't need two.

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: Yep

      I bought a nice 9" display tablet from a Chinese manufacturer (via Amazon) with a 30 GB card. Total cost £60. It gets used largely to read eBooks with the Kindle app, listen to MP3s, read the news and to play some games on. I wouldn't dream of using it for anything serious or online banking etc but it fills a niche* and so far has proved reliable and with a good battery life. Why spend a fortune on a big brand when something so cheap does so much? If and when this one dies, I'll simply replace it with another cheap one. As you say, when you've got one, you've got one; can't use more than one at a time.

      * The niche being lazing on the sofa. The tablet is little larger than a book, so is much more manageable and comfortable than my laptop. It is also handy to take anywhere I expect to sit around for any length of time (e.g. hospital waiting rooms).

  4. WylieCoyoteUK
    Holmes

    Netbook

    Market saturation, what's the surprise?.

    There's a limit to what you can do with one.

    I have a Samsung GT210.1, nearly 3 yrs old, I use it daily. It still does everything I need it to, why update?

  5. Mikel

    Tabs will do fine

    IDC and Gartner are legendary for calling the wrong play. Tabs will do fine this holiday, though iPads may be flat. I am even expecting the new $99-199 Windows tabs to do passing fair.

    Chromebooks and cheap laptops too. TVs at fire sale prices. But not 3D, nor curved. The new 4K TVs should have their first breakout success as well.

    Nothing will do as well as smart phones though.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Tabs will do fine

      You're both wrong and you're both right.

      Tablets will sell in large volume. Tablets will sell for less money. The number of tablets is flat-to-growing. The sale price of tablets is plummeting.

  6. Chris G

    Phat Phones

    Here in Spain everyone that hasn't got an iPhone has got a minimum 5" Android and I know half a dozen Note 3 owners. It's not uncommon to see people walking around talking to a 7" tablet so I think the main thing people are looking for is a phone that does everything almost as well as a phone and tablet combined.

    I have a Samsung Tab 3, when I bought it I didn't want to pay the extra to have 3G so I use it with a hotspot from my G700 Ascend, the only reason I use it at all is when I know I will need to do a fair amount of keyboard work while I am out , otherwise the 5" screen on the Ascend is good enough. When I am in the house I use my Laptop with Win 7 and much more functionality. The only other good thing about the Tab is for traveling as it is a bit less of an inconvenience to carry than the laptop and nearly as good for emails, even the virtual keyboard is acceptable if you can tolerate the little differences the OS gives it. Also the quality of the Tab is so good that I can see no reason to upgrade it in the near future, that must apply to many other tablet users so sales are bound to be down.

  7. Naselus

    Tablet sales are down for the same reasons all the tablets before the iPad had awful sales: Tablets don't really excel at anything, and it took the Apple hype machine to make anyone take them remotely seriously. Since then, people have now learned why we weren't using them pre-iPad, despite the tech being viable since about 1995.

    There's all this constant talk of how we should be dividing our gear into content 'consumption' and 'creation', but it's bollocks; my 2-screen desktop handles both consumption and content creation simultaneously (and on a 24" screen for each at that); my 15" laptop is just as good for playing a film or reading from as it is for answering email and coding while on the move; and my mobile phone allows me to answer email when I'm sat on the bus while still fitting into my pocket. There's no niche for the tablet, and now the novelty has worn off and people are starting to recognize that their iPad or Surface 2 was a hugely pricey mistake.

  8. Long John Brass

    +1 for slablet

    I hearby gnomeinate slablet as ElReg HR approved slango!

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