Study shows tablets are mostly used for mails, games, social networking,& search | Hacker News Reader

Study shows tablets are mostly used for mails, games, social networking,& search

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31 pointsdenzil_correa35 comments

"mails, games, social networking,& search"

Isn't that what computers in general are mostly used for?

My reaction too, then I realized that's what people do when they have an internet access. But they do some other things if the device lets them : on a desktop computer, they use office software and on a phone... they call and send SMS. To me a tablet is essentially the least capable internet connected device.

aka Consumption, consumption, consumption. I think this has been known to be the best use for tablets for awhile now. Not saying you can't create with a tablet but the cases where it is the best device for content creation are fairly few and far between IMO.

Not saying any of the above is bad. Most people do exactly the above on the web, consume content while contributing small bits here and there (a photo, a tweet, etc.) Hence the popularity of the tablet format.

Only 33 participants, I don't think that it is statistically significative.

I agree, normally in a research the size of sample should be proportional to the size of the population. The sample size of 33 doesn’t say anything while the size of population is a few million. Specially, when it is easy to access this population, this is not a research on a rare type of disease.

This would make complete sense based on the majority of popular apps on the various app stores. The next big thing I would imagine we will see is using tablets for books/reading, notes/note-taking, and educational usage. Also, I would imagine this will change drastically when the demographics of users start to get more wide. For example, when price points get lower and lower (but the advancements increase) and you start seeing tablets being a much more plausible computer replacement.

I don't think price is what keeps people from buying tablets, since a decent one can be had for $200. I think what keeps certain people, and I would say this is a large number, from buying tablets is that they don't see a need for one. Tablets aren't meant to do the same tasks as a desktop/laptop that is why they won't replace them.

Wow, took a whole 5 minutes until we got to the tablet vs desktop debate.

As a tablet owner who had high expectations when buying one, I - to my dismay - found out that it's mostly useless. I mean, it's a great device for consuming news and playing games, but other than that it hardly has any practical / creative application that a PC wouldn't do better.

I understand that it's a new and young technology, but it hurts me to see that something that could be much more, goes in the direction of wasting people's time with games and apps that Do Only One Thing, But Do Them Poory. That's why what I would like to see is a debate about how to make tablets more practical; how those big, handheld, multitouch screens can be used for making the world a better place.

My experience is similar to yours. What would you do to make tablets better?

I'm not sure yet; this thought that something is seriously wrong occured to me very recently and I didn't have free time to pursue it yet. As for what would I do is first of all, to explore the problem more, which is what I plan to do soon.

Anyway, some initial thoughts I had:

- consuming is still broken on tablets, at least on Android ones. Most of the apps out there are written for smartphones, and do not make use of neither screen space, nor the multitouch capabilities [0]. There are few exceptions, including third third party clients for Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, and also official GMail and Calendar app. And maybe maps. Pretty much everything else is still made for phones.

- tablets could be used as an additional input devices; the big advantage of them over typical input hardware is an reconfigurable interface[1] and ability to handle more finger operations. In particular, I have some drawings of an helper interface for 3D software in my notebook. The idea is to use tablet as an additional interface for zooming, panning and rotating the scene in a similar manner people use "spaceballs" for. I plan to test this idea soon, so I'll post it to HN alongside with all lessons learned in the process.

- I think that some ideas from Bret Victor's "Magic Ink"[2] about context-sensual data graphics could be explored more on tablets. Also exploring data that is in graphical form strikes me as something tablets could be much better for than mouse and keyboard.

- tablets are nice to carry around (as opposed to laptops), so I see some hope that as the physical environment around us gets more and more computerized, a tablet device may become the most convenient way to interact with it when you need a bigger screen than a smartphone can provide.

That's pretty much it; for now it's just me and the feeling that "surely a hand-held, big, multi-touch enabled screen with Wi-Fi and lots of processing power must have some better uses than playing Angry Birds and browsing Reddit".

[0] - I know, phones have multitouch as well, but with small screens, there's not really much place to make those touches comfortably.

[1] - that, on the other hand has a drawback of hindering the ability to learn to use them intuitively if we start reconfiguring those interfaces too much, but I guess it's just a tradeoff.

[2] - http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/

From my past experiences I don't think an Android tablet is even comparable to an iPad unless it's one of the latest models.

Does Asus Transformer TF300T (with Android 4.1) qualify? That's what I got, and I find it awesome in use (except of being generally a bit useless, of which I wrote above).

Awesome but useless? It either is good at something or it isn't. An iPad is very good for reading, browsing, email, twitter, etc., often better than a laptop, and most apps make good use of the screen space. The android tablets running 4.1 I've played with are not that terrible either, certainly good enough for web browsing, email and games.

It strikes me that the logical next step would be to have a tablet screen that can attach to a second tablet on a hinge that is shaped more like a keyboard.

The second display could then easily alternate between being a traditional computer keyboard to being an instrument panel, large trackpad or anything else you want.

Improved haptic feedback will make this experience much better of course.

I have a friend who tried a tablet with the two-screens-on-a-hinge setup you describe. She found it unusable.

I have a docking keyboard for my Samsung 10.1. I find it unusable. Worse than a netbook. The keyboard is crappy and the screen is right at my fingertips, so it's impossible to use with good posture.

Asus Transformer TF300T is perfectly usable with keyboard docked; it looks and feels like a good netbook then.

Is there anything besides that in the consumer market?

mails, games, social networking, search

In the consumer market - the market for consumers - that is, those who consume (content) - what other content categories can be named?

What about the "creator" market? From apps to videos to photochops to blog posts to video gaming blog posts?

So....all the things the other portable devices are used for? what else did you expected?

Did you read the study? Don't just comment on headlines.

The table of activities in the study confirms my worries about tablets: that they are primarily used for consumption. I'm noticing a trend amongst people (in general) to whom I speak with that they are no longer creating and instead consuming. This is akin to the mis-interpreted version of "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out" [1] where your devices turn you into a zombie.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out

As a new Nexus 7 owner my favourite tablet feature is: I can do my Android stuff without worrying about running my phone out of battery. Now if it only fit in my pocket...

I'm tepid on the Surface RT but I'm really looking forwards to the Surface Pro - finally a tablet that I can attach a controller to.

IMO Microsoft missed a bit by not integrating the 360 wireless adapter into the chassis, but I suppose it wasn't a priority.

Honestly, I can't think of much else tablets can do except for web browsing.

They're awesome for maps/navigation.

The actual article has a table with more than the title submitted would suggest, it also includes playing music, lightweight content creation (probably micro blogging would be my guess), managing finances and all the other things that people routinely use a computer (or any format) for. The missing category was programming but since the "study" had 33 participants it's utterly useless anyway.

Their conclusion validates what is common knowledge, that tablets can pretty much do anytimg any other computer can and people use them for everything. I was a little surprised to see managing finances because my experience is that I have seen people do this with their phone and laptops but not tablets. The main reason I think is that the tablet goes places laptops wouldn't do as conveniently and (my friends at least) trust the cellula data privacy more than coffee shop wifi privacy.

I think it'll be interesting to see if there are households who have a tablet but not a desktop/laptop. Until that happens, it still feels like a luxury product.

My elderly (75) in-laws are one such household, and I think that's spreading in their demographic.

What this seems to be suggesting is that tablets are not replacing PCs, they're more like a portable WebTV. :-P

So basically the "People are not buying PCs, they are buying iPads"-meme should stop here then?

Good good.

On the contrary. Mail, games, social networking and search are 90+% of what most normal people do with a computer. So people are buying iPads instead of computers because they work better for the most common use cases.

Not sure how well that logic holds. When I buy a computer (or anything really) I don't look for something that does 90% of what I want to do or what my old device could do. I want something that can do everything that I currently do as well as some stuff that I think I might like to do in the future.

For example with my car. I'd say I do about 50% of my driving with only me in the car, about another 40% of it with 1 other passenger and maybe only 10% with 2 or more passengers. I also drive most of the time with an almost empty boot.

So in that case I should just buy a 2 seater car with a small boot, since a 2 seater car would probably be either cooler or more economical. But of course I drive a 5 seater car with a reasonable size boot because I don't want the inconvenience of not being able to do that 10% use case.

On the other hand, if I was going to buy a second car in addition then it would make perfect sense to get a smaller 2 seater car.

Do you have a citation for that?

According to Nielsen, Americans spend about 35% on "Other", so I'd like to know where your 90% figure comes from.

Page 3 here - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/

Older numbers from 2010 - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-ameri...

At the very least, I think the meme is inaccurate.

Not commenting on anything else here, anecdotally the meme is very accurate.

All of my relatives in their 50's and older (and their friends) bought cheap netbooks 5 years ago, and every last one of them is replacing them with iPads as they break, etc. This is I think, oddly, the majority of the iPad owners I know (the rest are young(ish) geeks, like me, for whom the iPad is a 3rd or 5th device.)

From my perspective this meme is dead on.

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