BlackBerry CEO Questions Future of Tablets

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/blackberry-ceo-questions-future-of-tablets.html

 

Of course. What else?
Mrk

 

I agree completely that tablets don't fit well in a business model and I agree that the business world drives the computer/IT industry more than the home consumer market does. So I agree, the "tablet" may not make it 5 years.

But Blackberry, "the absolute leader in mobile computing"? No. Blackberry has to much ground to make up (Blackberry 2012 Market Share: 7%). Sounds like he's trying to convince his workforce (and investors) from jumping ship.

 

Yeah that was the "hight light" of the interview.
Nothing wrong with aiming high, but not that high perhaps. It's always best to set goals that you at least have a chance to achieve, or you will always feel that you're failing since you're setting the goals too high.

 

Tablets are not going anywhere, esp from the home market. I guess smartphones might take a bit of tablet share in the future, both in home and business environment.

 

We'll see. I agree it will take longer for the tablet to go away from the home market, but I believe it will go away - due to smartphones, and hybrid tablet/notebooks. There is just not enough power, or storage capability with tablets.

 

That depends on how much power you need. I wouldn't use a tablet as a primary computing device, but as a secondary device they don't need to be that powerful. In any case, their power and storage should increase as time goes on. Years ago you could have said laptops don't have enough power or storage capability.

(Okay, I still say that, but many don't. )

Besides, it seems that people are increasingly eager to have more and more of their stuff stored "in the cloud" anyway. Again, not me, but others.

 

I can see tablets going down in popularity, actually. I think at this point they'll stay around simply because of business use. It's this business use that tablets are really only good for anyway. Tablets will have to gain a lot more power and ability before they become main devices. That could be years away, when undoubtedly something else will come along that will replace tablets. The future of them never looked bright until the iPad showed up, and that was just 2 years ago. Before then, they flopped over and over again. Mobile computing is here to stay, but whether tablets are a long term part of that future remains to be seen.

 

Tablets are too limited IMO. I prefer the convertible form factor.

 

For web use they really are a bit crippled. Imagine the surprise of those who bring that shiny Samsung Android home not knowing any better, fire it up, and find out Flash is dead. Do that with a 600+ dollar iPad and it's even worse. As far as I'm aware, Flash is supported only on Surface Pro, which is what, 800-900 dollars still? Awful lot of money to use 98% of the web. I also think even that is only through IE 10. Chrome is a no go and is absolute crap on tablets to begin with.

 

http://www.phonearena.com/news/The-...-the-tablet-market-growing-5X-by-2017_id42579

 

Analysts and research groups don't do anything the rest of us don't do, you take an educated guess. The Yankee Group may very well be right, who's to say what will be the case in 2017 or even sooner. One thing isn't likely to change no matter how much more or less popular tablets get, and that is that for serious work and serious use, tablets won't cut it. Screens were mentioned, and that's a good example. Once you get past, say, 12 inch screens, they're no longer tablets and suddenly they start becoming as much of a burden to carry around as an ultrabook/notebook.

 

I think that is totally backwards. I think they will stick around, if they stick around, because of home consumers, not business. I think they are better suited for personal entertainment (boredom smashers), and not business use.

Tablets are too big to stuff in your pocket, and not powerful enough to replace a notebook/PC.

 

I totally agree.

Two things i see against tablets are the competition of smartphones, that cover big part of the tablets functions, and also the fact that working in a screen simply isn't as practical and fast as working with a keyboard and touchpad or mouse.

 

I can agree that tablets will go down in popularity but they will not completely disappear. For a lot of people tablets will be just great. All they do is listen to music, watch movies, play games and check email. Smartphones have screens that are just too small for watching movies on the plane and a laptop might be just something too big to carry around. Sure there are 10 inch laptops but do they really provide comfortable typing experience? Would you really want to type a book on those?

Apple is the one company that should really think about the future since a lot of their business comes from selling tablets.

 

My contribution to the noise:

I think that worldwide the universal device will be the smartphone, not the high-ends but the relatively inexpensive ones. Besides that, some people will use tablets and other will use more powerful and versatile laptops, but few people will use both. And the desktop will become a niche device and survive mainly as all-in-ones.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if tablets and laptop tablets (now called convertibles) will become one and the same market. The only difference will be that some people will prefer detachable keyboard while others will like their keyboard to be always attached.

Desktops will always have their market. The only casualty of this transition will be Laptops which will increasingly start looking like tablets. No removable battery, no upgradable RAM, no upgradeable Hard Drive. It is inevitable as electronics will become cheaper to produce and Laptops will become like throw away tablets. It saddens me a bit because I always liked upgrading my laptop parts. But they look at apple and increasingly other companies such as lenovo following this trend.

 

They're much better suited for business use than they are personal entertainment. Storage limits, hardware limits and lack of Flash hurt personal entertainment badly. So does bandwidth costs, probably even more so than the other limits. They're suited for small tasks such as email checking, small file transferring, Facebook/Twitter posts (and even that is a pain depending on the device you own), the same tasks business users perform "out and about" on a daily basis. There's a reason they're called mobile devices and a reason why storage and hardware limitations exist, they're designed for the exact purposes I laid out.

 

But it is easy to install flash, even though it is longer supported.

 

I agree 100% - they are just too limited for business use.

Even for home use they are very limited. I know lots of people who own a desktop or laptop as well as a tablet.

 

Tablets are in extensive use in pretty much all the gas plants I've been involved with to access schematics, P&IDs, 3D models, etc.

 

Maybe so, but I think on the whole use for tablets in business is limited.

 

In all my meetings, I see more tablets for notetaking/recording than laptops and paper. We could go on for a long time, but I'm seeing a lot of tablets regardless of models on a daily basis with all the clients I deal with.

 

Wrong. The Flash APK method no longer works for even Firefox. There for a while you could download a quite outdated (which is stupid to begin with on a laughably insecure system like Android) Flash APK and install it to Dolphin or Firefox. That's no longer the case with Jelly Bean. Even when you could, Flash was a pretty ugly experience that really wasn't worth the bother a good portion of the time.

@MarcP: Exactly, tablets are perfect for that kind of usage. I sometimes wonder if people are imagining spreadsheets and other larger activities when they talk about business use limitations. Of course no one is doing that kind of stuff on tablets.

 

Even for that, we all bring thumdrives with our files to client sites because...

1 - They don't allow foreign laptops on their site.
2 - All conference rooms already have a dummy computer linked to the projectors/plasmas/LCDs where you can stick your thumbdrive and show your stuff.

In rare occasions we have to bring our own projector and laptop, but that is extremely rare. I bring my iPad (first time I mention a brand) with the Notablity app because I love my audio recordings to be sync'd with my note taking. My requirements gathering notes have been 100% on point with this combo.