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Comment by ableal | Hacker News Reader

John Gruber had a good observation about the charts published in Quartz (specifically the last one): "Apple has sold more iPads in its first 57 months than they sold iPhones in its first 57 months."

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/04/27/quartz-chartz-ap...

http://qz.com/392202/were-live-charting-apples-second-quarte...

If Apple pumped out over 250 million iPads, a great majority of which is probably still in use, with the usual Android and Windows numbers the whole tablet population must be in the neighborhood of one billion.

I believe the "slower update cycle" explanation, and I'd guess many are waiting for wireless battery charging, nowadays the obviously missing hardware feature.

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I'm a subscriber of the slower update cycle explanation as well. Everyone I know who owns a tablet is happy with what it does for a longer period of time. Have a look at iPhone refreshes versus iPad refreshes and you'll notice that the iPad follows the iPhone, so it should be no surprise where the iPad falls in the growth trajectory of the company.

Following that same line of examination (looking at refreshes), consider the impact of each refresh. What does a new iPad include?

Thinner and lighter? That's a nice to have, but is it cost-of-upgrade nicer?

Touch ID? How important is Touch ID to users who use the iPad casually. With an iPhone you're frequently operating the device with one hand, so Touch ID simplifies the authentication process. When you're using your device for payments, Touch ID is pretty damned incredible. Neither of these apply to the iPad. I'd love to have Touch ID on my iPad, but it's not worth the cost of an upgrade.

Better camera? I'm an outlier here — almost everyone I know uses their iPad as a camera, except me — but I'm just not sure this alone is enough to push people to upgrade. In the iPhone environment, all of these new features act cumulatively to make an iPhone upgrade worthwhile.

Larger size? Oh, wait. That's iPhone only, and it's probably one of the biggest drivers of iPhone 6/6+ sales. It's irrelevant to the iPad.

Tablets, as a product, involve a slower upgrade cycle because they're actually the more traditional product when compared to a device like the iPhone.

First of all, Gruber is absolutely right that there are still a whole lot of tablets being sold.

That said, sales have plateaued at best and there are probably a lot of contributors:

- Slow upgrade cycle as you suggest. I have a 2nd or 3rd gen iPad and I have absolutely zero reason to upgrade at this point.

- They are probably being squeezed to a certain degree. I find that, even with just an iPhone 6 rather than a Plus, I'm often more inclined to just read on my phone than go grab my tablet.

- I've probably become more quick to grab a Chromebook or some other laptop I have laying around than do anything half-way complicated on my tablet. So there may be some realization that tablets are sometimes more trouble than they're worth even for more complex mostly-consumption tasks.

- I suspect that we may end up with some sort of tablet and laptop reconvergence even though tablets took off in large part because the convergence between the two devices was broken.

Nah, tablets will be huge again. The key will be making them a better input device. Voice recognition, stylus, haptics, keyboards, touchless gestures: http://youtu.be/qKQCjwMDiPM

At the very least, sliding a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse next to your tablet then having it turn into "laptop mode" would solve the problem.

>At the very least, sliding a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse next to your tablet then having it turn into "laptop mode" would solve the problem.

I don't really disagree. This might well be what the reconvergence looks like--in combination with software changes that better bridge different modes of operation.

That said, you may also be right that enhancements to interfaces could make a tablet-type device qualitatively better than today while also pushing it in directions that are fundamentally different from the type of device needed to do the types of tasks we mostly use laptops for today.

Do you guys know you're actually describing the Surface 3 in detail? ;)

The Surface probably needs another rev or two. Microsoft is doing a lot with Cortana. How long before I can sit down and write a small document with it, for instance, with the ability to make significant edits? It's also laptop heavy.

Microsoft is approaching the tablet by scaling down a laptop. I like it but it needs more work.

I haven't done more than play with one but from what I've seen Microsoft has definitely done the best job of a (re)converged device today. Bu, for whatever reason, I think it would be hard to call it a really successful device so far.

> I suspect that we may end up with some sort of tablet and laptop reconvergence even though tablets took off in large part because the convergence between the two devices was broken.

I tend to agree. The only tablet I own and use is a Surface Pro 3 (and not because of Windows, rather in spite of it--it's a great Photoshop machine for the money, and happens to be pretty good at some other stuff on top of that). I've got Visual Studio on it too, though I don't use it for development much because the Type Cover is crap. If I could get a stiff-hinge keyboard dock for the thing, it would probably be my primary game development machine (I use C# for that, day job stuff and web stuff is on my Mac). As-is, Photoshop and light browsing are what it's good for. And I think that's the basic point of overlap for bringing tablets into "work" modes - the transformable tablet/laptop, only actually good.

>> I have a 2nd or 3rd gen iPad and I have absolutely zero reason to upgrade at this point.

The 2nd gen (non-Retina) iPads make my eyes bleed. They are terrible devices.

I had a 3rd gen and after a year, websites became more complicated and it just felt 'slow', so I sold it and got the Retina Mini.

Yeah, I believe the slower update cycle too. I have two iPad 1's and an iPad 2, and while I'm definitely due for an upgrade, it doesn't get the same type of price reduction as a phone, so it'll just have to happen in its own time.

As for use - they are constantly getting used for games, movies, books, and web browsing. That is what they are good at. You want a clear use case - its that. My computer stays on the desk most of the time.

>If Apple pumped out over 250 million iPads, a great majority of which is probably still in use, with the usual Android and Windows numbers the whole tablet population must be in the neighborhood of one billion.

How so? Android and Windows tablets never sold as much as iPads and still don't. It might be 50-50 now, but not 3 times as much by any means.

I was guessing, but looking it up ... Gartner are talking over 200 million tablets per year, of which only 50 or 60 are iPads (according to the Quartz charts), so I'd say it's in the ballpark. (I'd expect the Androids to decay faster, though ;-)

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2954317

   """
   Device Type    2014   2015   2016
   [...]
   Tablets         216    233    259
   """

Interesting.

The last numbers I've seen were from around 2012, when no Android tablet had made any dents yet, and that version of a Surface was a failure.

A stylus would be nice. One reason I'm seriously looking at Surface (disclosure: Microsoft employee but all iPads at home).

Chiming in to agree with slower update cycles.

I use my iPad all the time, but primarily for reading and watching movies and TV shows. My three-year-old iPad does these things great and there's simply no reason to upgrade.

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