A long time ago in a galaxy far away, in 2010 to be exact, Apple introduced iPad and it was game changer. Not long after that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab came and a lot of other Android tablets. Good ones and bad ones. Fast forward 6 years and tablets are heading towards extinction. Is that right? Let’s have a quick look.
Whole purpose of tablet was to use it to consume media, large screen was their biggest strenght. But there is variety of smartphones with large screens right now. That makes playing games, watching videos and reading quite comfortable. Customers are currently thinking: ‘Do I really need tablet as well? My iPhone 6s hardly fits into my pocket already’. Smartphones are killing tablets.
No one could have predicted precisely how smartphones would evolve to be so useful and important they are in our lives right now. On the other hand, tablets were meant to be technological home for newspapers, books, magazines and even grocery flyers. Industries behind all those mentioned things were supposed to thrive thanks to new media infrastructure.
Reality turned out differently as pretty much always. Now everybody wants news immediately on their phones. Even typical tablet app like Flipboard are now focusing on smartphones.
So right now you might think that there is no need to support apps on tablets, that ‘tablets are dead’. Well, it’s of course hard to predict the future and there is no doubt that concept of tablets need revision. But there is also one thing that makes me believe that tablets will come back swinging eventually: it is predicted that in 2016 15,6% of global population will use tablet even though the sales are slowing down, mainly because people don’t change their tablets as often as smartphones. That’s over 1 billion of users, number that companies won’t forget about and will try to come up with solution.
Let’s remember that not everyone is happy with bigger phones – that’s why iPhone SE was introduced. Such people will consider using tablets. Apple and Android producer’s must rethink their approach. We shouldn’t give up on tablets when deciding which devices should be supported just yet.