is there really a market for tablets?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Mar 21, 2010 12:37 AM EDT |
Tablets have been around in one form or another for years, but haven't caught on. The iPad is still vapor, but everyone is rushing to compete with it. Without really good voice or handwriting recognition, what good is a tablet PC? I'm having a hard time seeing the appeal. |
| jdixon Mar 21, 2010 10:19 AM EDT |
> is there really a market for tablets? Oh, yes. Anyone who is checking items off a list or filling in forms while in the field is better served by a tablet than by a full laptop. Think FedEx, UPS, warehouse inventory, etc. The larger size of a tablet over a phone type device makes the text more readable and the boxes easier to check/fill out. |
| JaseP Mar 22, 2010 10:10 AM EDT |
I have to agree with jdixon,... I use a tablet at work to take my notes while on the phone (I'm in sales), customize marketing pieces with handwritten notes (Xournal allows for PDF annotation), and a host of other things. A second PC or laptop (or even a regular netbook) is just too much (I use a Gigabyte M912M convertable touchscreen netbook with Ubuntu Karmic 9.10, with a Cairo-dock interface and Compiz running). &,... For browsing at home while on the couch, there is nothing better than a tablet... I also have a Viliv S5 UMPC with touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, and a GPS,... but have had some difficulty getting everything working... I am now in the process of switching between Ubuntu, over to Mandriva because of embeded device support... I had an earlier tablet device too,... but have mothballed it for now... In the future, these devices will be everything from whole house remote controls, to PDA/phone/wallet/personal GPS/entertainment device/etc. That they haven't caught on until now is because they had been prohibitively expensive, heavy, slow and lacked software to adequately take advantage of all their capabilities. That all has changed with Atom and other low energy processors, abundance of LED backlit screens, cheaper battery technology, a drop in the cost of touch screen digitizers, 3D dektop software (like Compiz), handwriting apps (like CellWriter), etc. Don't sell this tablet market short,... you will be surprised how much people will take to these devices. If it takes Apple to make them "cool" for the average person,... all the more power to them... I'll happily take my Linux powered (not-really-a) "knock-off" version. And, I'll save the argument for which is really the true knock-off, the iPad, or the Linux powered tablets that pre-dated it for another day... |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 22, 2010 4:44 PM EDT |
If the price is right, there's a market for darn near anything. |
| tracyanne Mar 22, 2010 4:51 PM EDT |
Price, that's the one thing that's stopped me from using existing tablet technology, as soon as a bit of hardware get the touch screen treatment, the price goes up by about half again. I think the tablets have to be priced at or less than a corresponding sized netbook before they really take off. |
| jdixon Mar 22, 2010 7:49 PM EDT |
> I think the tablets have to be priced at or less than a corresponding sized netbook before they really take off. Or at most only slightly over, yes. |
| hkwint Mar 22, 2010 8:52 PM EDT |
Probably tablets will make nice "portable media players / portable game consoles / PND's / portable e-readers" (the last requires a dual mode screen however, the one that PixelQi is shipping in 10.1" in big numbers right now). So I'd say as long as the ratio output / input of the task / work you're going to do is pretty high - or the input is not complex (such as in games which only use an accelerometer), there's a big market. |
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