back to article One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard by 2020

Tablets with detachable keyboards are set to capture a fifth of the PC market by 2020, in Western Europe at least, say the abacus-shufflers at IDC. The firm says Typoslabs, as we prefer to call the devices, accounted for just five per cent of PC sales in 2015. But by 2018 combined sales of typoslabs and pure tablets will …

  1. redpawn

    47.1%

    I find now when I boot to Windows 10, 47.1% of my time is spent updating. With luck that can be reduced to one fifth of the time. Indeed they have found a sweet spot.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 47.1%

      Do you only boot once a month or something?

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: 47.1%

        Yes, this is something I've noticed with W10, it does seem to be almost permanently doing updates, with no real way of seeing where it is in the update process or forcing it to complete an update now! because I want to get on and install something.

        And yes it probably is worse on PC's which users switch off when they aren't using them, but then MS should of allowed for this use-case and provided sensible alternative update strategies, like scheduled update...

        1. msknight

          Re: 47.1%

          Just like Xbox.

      2. redpawn

        Re: 47.1%

        I boot windows only when I have to use one critical software package. The rest of the time I use Mint or Mac. I'm best off switching on at least half an hour before planning to code. I can be up and running with a fresh install of Mint before Windows 10 completes its update often times. I wonder what all it is doing to take so long.

      3. Runilwzlb

        Re: 47.1%

        Maybe even less often. The experience of using W10 on either tablet or desktop (I have one of each) is so painful, that I'll only boot it to run an app that doesn't exist on one of my other devices. Ubuntu/Android/IOS/ [and yes even] WebOS.

  2. Christian Berger

    Yes, but that's not because people want those

    It's because in the portable <13" area you can barely get anything else than those things where the keyboard falls off when you want to hold them. So everyone who wants a <13" laptop can only get one of those and will have to live with that bug.

    Of course hardware manufactureres will see that as demand for keyboards that fall off, and produce more, perhaps even extending that design flaw into larger laptops.

    It's one of the big missunderstandings about the economy. Demand does not drive supply. Supply facilitates demand as you cannot buy things, and therefore cannot express your demand, which aren't offered on the market. So if you only offer X, people will buy X since they have little other chance. Things that aren't offered don't show up as demand in your numbers.

    1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

      To have and have not

      If you really want to know what the future of America looks like you only have to appreciate what life is like for an oil rich country that is being run by a bus driver -against the wishes of the extremely rich as is the case in Venezuela. Imagine more Simpsonesque patching if Trump gets elected. A one party system at war with itself.

      The Internet of things will get much worse than what USAnians are already equipped with and the ability to drive a car will depend on the worst of things -which will at least make it easier for law enforcement to see whose selling vegetable derivatives.

      So what exactly people will be connecting to HTTP@Register with will be fairly moot by then. NSA will get a cut in funding which will break the international cables as the morale on the submarines that spy on that arm of depredations falls.

      Elongation Musk -in charge of satellite connectivity, will be leading religious morals to new heights and all the old military suppliers will get so thin that the Democrats start making inroads into peckerwoodville. I predict things are going to get very interesting. Especially when army recruitment falls so far below record low levels that even the National Guard has to get protection. (Probably from Mexican day labourers. Don't ask, don't tell, intel border guards?)

      Trump that.

      1. 's water music

        Re: To have and have not

        Have you got some sort of Dorian Gray portrait deal going on with amanfrommars?

      2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: To have and have not

        "NSA will get a cut in funding"

        Nope, won't happen. Ever.

        At least not until there's been a revolution - and even then, no guarantee.

        1. msknight

          Re: To have and have not

          Whoever is in power, is there because they wanted it... and once they have it, they work to ensure they keep it. NSA funding will remain high whoever is in charge.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yes, but that's not because people want those

      Glossy monitors took over in a similar fashion.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bring on our detachable keyboards!

    One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard by 2020

    Given that 100% of all desktop PCs have a detachable keyboard, and can be described as a tablet (in the Babylonian sense, of course), I am hardly surprized.

  4. Tromos

    No typoslabs here

    For small and cute, give me a Raspberry Pi system. For a serious desktop PC I prefer large matt black towers of a gothic/Mad Max persuasion. Both have the advantage of optimally running systems that aren't Windows 10.

  5. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Do people really want an OS which works in tablet and desktop mode?

    It's almost as if they've worked backwards from Windows 10 to find the question...

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Do people really want an OS which works in tablet and desktop mode?

      Yes, but it isn't W10.

      Win XP worked in tablet and desktop mode, just that with XP you knew you were going to get a desktop style UX in tablet mode and hence you needed a stylus, whereas with W8 and W10 you get a bit of tablet touch UI fluff which when touched/clicked on drops you into a high-res desktop UI, which is almost impossible to read navigate on a 10" tablet.

      I therefore think, that with a W10 tablet, a keyboard and stylus are mandatory.

      Hence tablets with detachable keyboards are selling users the dream of a true tablet ie. the iPad, with the idea that the keyboard will allow them to do "real work", when in fact the real reason is Win10 isn't a tablet and desktop OS.

      I'm getting tired of waiting for Canonical to decide when they will deliver their phone/tablet/desktop version of Linux.

      1. Runilwzlb

        Re: Do people really want an OS which works in tablet and desktop mode?

        Agree...almost. I have an 8" W10 tablet w/bt kbd.. Navigation, activating controls, and selecting menu items still next best thing to impossible. Only thing accurate and versatile enough would be a mouse. Add'ly, my tablet freezes if more than 1 bt device is connected,. So if I want to use external speakers, can't have an input device attached. Touch enabled W10 tablet sounds good on paper...trying to actually use it to do anything?...fugeddaboudit,

      2. bombastic bob Silver badge

        Re: Do people really want an OS which works in tablet and desktop mode?

        "Yes, but it isn't W10."

        exactly. That's MOSTLY because Win-10-nic isn't a DESKTOP OS. It's a HYBRID CLUSTER-BLANK of "Ape" (8.x) and Microsoft's attempt to leverage a "new" desktop paradigm.

        Q: If it's so GREAT, why is Win-10-nic ONLY adopted by about 14% of users (according to statcounter) after "that many" months of being a *FREE* upgrade and GWX shoving it up/down/into every orifice MS can find? And 7 remains ~43%?

        A: Win-10-nic is NOT great (in fact, it's probably WORSE than "Ape" in too many ways). It's highly overrated, and anyone saying it IS great is suspected (by me) of being a shill, fanboi, or dedicated Microsoft employee. And the general public does NOT want it.

        As for slabs - the slab market was mis-interpreted, too. I expect similar, here, with 'slab convertibles'.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No, they don't

      Please don't buy Surface to use it as a tablet. They are buying it as a "thin and light" laptop, and it is thinner and lighter than about anything else out there with a similar display size.

  6. Captain DaFt

    Incoming rant

    "The winner here is Windows 10, which IDC reckons is satisfying users' desire for an OS that works in tablet or desktop mode and is therefore fuelling typoslab adoption"

    Obviously, IDC stands for "I Do Crack".

    The only reason "Typoslabs" exist in the first place is that Microsoft, no matter how hard they tried, or how much they mangled the interface, just couldn't figure out how to make Windows work on tablets and PCs/laptops with the same interface.*

    So they bunged a keyboard on a tablet, invented the excuse "Business case" and cranked PR up to eleven.

    Yeah, Win10 is the "winner" here >eye roll<, on a kludge that wouldn't be needed if they'd listened to the users, and kept the UI that worked on PCs and laptops, and did a separate one that worked well on touch screens.

    -----------------------------------------------

    *And phones and TVs, and game systems, and cars, and portziebes... for Cryin' out loud, they've been chasing that "One Windows User Experience Everywhere" hallucination since Win 3.1!

    Psst, Microsoft, It ain't never gonna work, might as well be trying to build a helicopter that also doubles as a four wheeler, a steamship and a fishing rod. IDIOTS!

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Incoming rant

      "...might as well be trying to build a helicopter that also doubles as a four wheeler, a steamship and a fishing rod..."

      Like this? IMDB entry / Episode 1

      Countdown to beer o'clock starting now... have a nice weekend everyone!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So the keyboard detaches, after a few attachment cycles the keyboard connector will no longer function due to breakage and you are stuck with a tablet that you have to buy a bluetooth keyboard for.

    Hence just buy a tablet.

    1. Ole Juul

      Hence just buy a tablet.

      I'd say buy a PC. According to the article, 4 out of 5 tablets with detachable keyboard will be PCs.

  8. Mikel

    IDC and Microsoft

    Has Microsoft ever done anything at all that IDC didn't think was the cat's pajamas? "To the moon!" is the only decree they have for the largest purchaser of their "Independent" analysis.

    1. Wade Burchette

      Re: IDC and Microsoft

      Yogi Berra said that predictions are hard, especially about the future. These are the same group of individuals that said PC's are dead, tablets are the future. A few months later, tablet sales started to drop. These paid analysts always assume that past trends = future trends. They do not account for things like a horrible version of Windows followed by a horrible horrible version of Windows, market saturation, and fads.

      IDC has a sweet job. Like meteorologists, they can be spectacularly wrong a few days out but yet people will still pay for their opinion.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge

        Re: IDC and Microsoft

        "These are the same group of individuals that said PC's are dead, tablets are the future. A few months later, tablet sales started to drop. These paid analysts always assume that past trends = future trends. They do not account for things like a horrible version of Windows followed by a horrible horrible version of Windows, market saturation, and fads."

        one of their failures is to recognize that the PC market is like a 'derivative', and NOT 'current total ownership'. They fail to see WHY people aren't buying a lot of PCs [it's obvious, "new" machines aren't perceived as "better" enough, mostly because of "Ape" and Win-10-nic and Moore's law not making machines 30% perceptibly faster every year any more]. So people don't buy AS MANY PCs because the OLD ones are either 'good enough', 'better', or 'do not require re-learning'.

        slabs _WERE_ "new/shiny" and not so much any more. Analysis on slabs should exclude other devices. they stand alone.

        Microsoft still can't force 43% of the user base [currently using 7] to switch to Win-10-nic despite it being free. Latest statcounter proves it. Look how flat 7 usage has become, and any growth in 10 is being absorbed from "Ape" (8.x) and "other".

        Those are generally people who keep their OLD machines as-is, or explicitly purchase a new or re-conditioned machine [I did] with 7 on it.

        Maybe MS should hire *ME* as an expert. At least they'd get the TRUTH.

  9. Big_Ted

    Windows Typoslabs in 2020 ?

    There may be very few of them, with multi windows coming to Android (plus Google combinging it with ChromeOS) and the apps for MS Office plus Google Docs etc improving all the time we could see Windows being outsold by it on non Business systems and maybe even there being outsold be a combination of Android and iOS.

    MS will only be a force if they keep Windows 10 free for all including business, as soon as they try to charge a subscription people will start to look elsewhere and Linux could be on the up in enterprise space.

    As for me I will keep my old android tablet until they come out with a lightweight 14" plus one.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Please NOOOO!

      Linux, great, but not Linux cruftdroid please. Going from an MS OS to a Google OS is just out of the frying pan and into the erupting volcano crater.

  10. thomas k

    awkward

    A 27" screen size model would be a tad inconvenient to lug around.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: awkward

      Agree about a 27", but the Dell XPS 18 is reasonably portable - ie. it is great in the back of a car, but too big to go in a rucksack.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard

    the same way as tablets were supposed to make us ALL abandon our laptops, and the same way smart watches were / are supposed to make us abandon tablets and so the merry-go-round goes round, cause we gotta move this shit, man, for the sake of humanity...

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard

      "Smartwatches make us abandon tablets"?

      Never heard that suggested.

      That's like saying roller skates are going to make us abandon cars.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge

      Re: One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard

      "cause we gotta move this [profanity], man, for the sake of humanity..."

      <lyrics>

      We gotta move these, refrigerators, we gotta move these color TVs...

      </lyrics>

      money for nothing, and chicks for free!

      it's happened before, yeah!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows is 14.3% of the OS market now

    To put this in context, Windows (all versions) is under 15% of the OS market now. Software will likely be written for the Tablets running the two biggest OS's: Android and iOS, rather than Windows.

    So the shift to Android and iOS will likely continue because new software is being developed on those OS's not Windows. There's another factor too, Android is getting official multi-window and free window support, which will enable tablets >12 inches to be useful. So Android will expand more into Laptop space, at the same time programmers will learn Android/Java not Windows+thingy. (I don't know what development tools you use for Windows now its such a mess in there, C#? Winforms? What?).

    (Source Gartner)

    1,4 billion Android

    280 million iOS

    355 million Windows

    + others

    =2.469 billion OS running devices, of which Windows is 14.3%

    1. werdsmith Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Windows is 14.3% of the OS market now

      Android/Chrome would represent no improvement over Microsoft.

      What a terrible missed opportunity that would be. See avatar.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Windows is 14.3% of the OS market now

        Most computer users have such low requirements there's no need to improve over Windows. Windows itself would be long dead if that hadn't been true for decades!

  13. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Could we have a selection of IDC's predictions from 4 years ago, just so we can see how well their previous predictions worked out.

  14. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard by 2020"

    Nope.

    1. lsces

      Re: "One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard by 2020"

      You missed the real point ... the majority of them will not actually be running windows ;)

  15. RonWheeler

    To be fair

    I bought a detachable keyboard for my Linx 10 and never use it. The onscreen keyboard is good enough for the usage scenarios where I'm using a tablet and I don't want the extra bulk. And at least Windows 10 is a usable tablet OS (read Chrome launcher), unlike phone-centric Android. For real work or gaming - desktop, big monitor and fullsize keyboard can't be beaten.

    1. Youngdog

      And also in the interests of fairness

      I brought my Lynx 10 with a detachable keyboard and never remove it. Spec wise it's almost identical to the Asus Transformer T100 and half the price - it's the cheapest full x86 notebook I've ever owned.

      1. Down not across

        Re: And also in the interests of fairness

        I brought my Lynx 10 with a detachable keyboard and never remove it. Spec wise it's almost identical to the Asus Transformer T100 and half the price - it's the cheapest full x86 notebook I've ever owned.

        Which is great if you're happy with the provided OS. Not so great if you're not as that (unless I'm mistaken) is BayTrail which tends to be 64-bit CPU hobbled with 32-bit UEFI which makes substituting a different OS bit awkward. Not necessarily impossible.

        The later Cherry Trail is more appealing as I believe they tend to be fully 64-bit. Of course even then there is still the question how well the hardware is supported in replacement OS of choice.

        Either way, with often 10hr+ runtime, they're not that bad successor for the old netbooks.

    2. David Paul Morgan

      Re: To be fair

      it's horses for courses.

      I had the transformer tf101 and my partner had a tf201.

      I always used mine undocked and he used his docked.

      I now use my Xperia Z2 occasionally with the 'sort of matching' PS3 keyboard and my partner uses his Z4 with the matching keyboard as a mini-laptop - he does a lot of typing on the train.

      I've been using my trust asus 1050 , but upgraded it to Win7/SSD and now win10.

      I think my next PC will be a Win10, but 12" screen combo.

      It really depends on what applications you want to use and that determines the platform.

  16. Robert Moore

    Yeah, Right.

    Not gonna happen.

    Businesses don't want these fragile things, and home users are beginning to realize that they don't use their "Home Computer" anymore.

    Lastly, Win 10 sucks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yeah, Right.

      These 'fragile things' are considerably more robust than any laptop I've ever had.

      Solid state, and incredibly light. If I had to take chances as to which one would survive a drop down the stairs my latitude or my Linx 10 I know which I would pick and it wouldn't be the latitude! Of course when it's gone it's gone but lets face it most businesses that don't have an IT department probably already bin their laptops when they break now a days.... and in theory everything is now backed up to the cloud right...(?!)

      Many businesses I know already kit their staff out with tablets of various sorts and something like a cheapo HP laptop. I can't see why they'd want to keep doing that and not distribute one device - especially when cheap laptops really are shockingly bad and many of these hybrid tablets are so good.

  17. Dr_N

    Upgraded to W10 on my Asus Vivotab T180C

    Now it's utterly schizz as a touch screen/pen user experience. (Personally speaking.)

    Thanks everyone who moaned so much about W8(.1) GUI !

    1. Adrian 4

      Re: Upgraded to W10 on my Asus Vivotab T180C

      I had to check Urban Dictionary to find out whether 'schizz' was good or bad.

      I have a T100TA. It runs 8.1 and is unpleasant to use for many reasons. I somehow doubt 10 will be a lot better, but it's hard to tell whether to stay on 8.1 or not. Changing to 10 isn't trivial as it requires more disc space than the machine has, so it gets halfway and then gets stuck - and then there's the whole remaining nightmare of W10 as described elsewhere.

      Please don't suggest I put Linux on it. I'd very much like to, but it doesn't seem to be really available without a fair bit of work. It's less trouble just to buy a better machine (which is why the T100TA sits on the shelf and I use a Lenovo).

      1. Dr_N

        Re: Upgraded to W10 on my Asus Vivotab T180C

        By schizz I meant shit.

        I'm trying to cut down on my online swearing, but now you've gone made me type shit.

        I was unaware that schizz meant something else. Daddy-o.

  18. jaywin

    Typoslab?

    I prefer Detoblet

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've got Win10 on a desktop and on a Surface 3 Pro. I've contemplated moving to Mint but reviews say the music software I use - Reaper, Riffmaster, Guitar Pro, et al - has unacceptable latency problems when used in a Windows emulator.

    On the desktop I find Win10 excellent. It's much faster at tasks that I'm used to taking an appreciable time on earlier Windows - 8.1, 7, 95, 3.11. The desktop's always switched on and updates occur without my seeing them.

    I don't use the Surface every day and far too often when I do it takes a frustratingly long time to get going. And if there is a way of leaving it switched on and waiting to gobble up any update Redmond throws at it I've not found it.

    The idea of the Surface, much criticised by commentards here, is sound. It's light to carry around, the clip-on keyboard works and its connection shows no sign of anything that could be described as wear, the keyboard's 90% as good as a real one, there's room for the software you need to take around with you and the new dock is great. Stripped of the keyboard the Surface is better than the phone I'm using at the moment for tasks like combining consumption of a decent bottle of wine and writing to El Reg. If only it could eat up its updates without troubling me!!!

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