Sunday, May 1, 2016

iSad: Nobody wants to buy tablets anymore.

iSad: Nobody wants to buy tablets anymore.


There’s only one thing helping the tablet market right now—keyboards—and even that is not enough to stave off a decline in tablet sales as consumers grow increasingly uninterested in the devices.
Worldwide shipments of tablets fell another 15% during the first quarter as “overall disinterest” in the product category reached record highs, according to analysts at industry tracker IDC.
Apple Inc.  sold the most tablets of any other company during the quarter, giving it a 26% market share. However, that is a decline from a 27% share last quarter as iPad sales plunged 18%, according to IDC.
The only bright spot was in detachable tablets, which are regular slate tablets with detachable keyboards. Shipments of detachable tablets more than doubled to an all-time high of 4.9 million, making them one of only a handful of mobile device categories currently growing. Slate tablets and PCs have both suffered significant declines in recent quarters, while smartphones have barely held on to their growth, with worldwide shipments rising to just 334.9 million from 334.3 million in the first quarter, according to IDC. Earlier this week, Apple reported its first ever decline in iPhone sales.
The data speak to a broader shift from slate tablets, which are essentially just smartphones with much larger screens, to more functional two-and-one devices, such as Apple’s iPad Pro and Microsoft Corp.’s  Surface Pro, which are being increasingly pushed by brands into the enterprise market.
These tablets are typically more expensive than their less-capable cousins, which should help the manufacturers replace revenue, but not unit sales. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said earlier this week that he expects Apple’s best year-over-year revenue performance in two years from the iPad segment this quarter.
“With the PC industry in decline, the detachable market stands to benefit as consumers and enterprises seek to replace their aging PCs with detachables,” said Kitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst with IDC’s worldwide quarterly mobile device trackers.
The decline of PCs, which IDC said dropped 11.5% during the first quarter, along with improving detachable tablet shipments might be why traditional PC companies such as HP Inc.  are shifting toward smaller mobile devices from more traditional PCs. On Thursday, HP and Alphabet Inc.’s Google    launched the most powerful Chromebook yet, under the HP brand, in an effort to attract more corporate clients. 
But it may be a while until the overall tablet market recovers, if ever. Keyboards may be giving tablets a second life and sparking a shift in how these devices are used, but the troubled slate tablet still accounts for nearly 88% of the market.

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