The key to longevity of any product is being able to remain relevant, desirable, and to compete with new products and technology. The whole issue of cost of entry plays a key role in the ability of new competitors to enter the fray. A mature market, such as the one for cold breakfast cereals, has existed for a very long time and is not easily upset by new product entries or technological changes. Cut-rate knockoffs and high prices for name brands haven't drastically altered the market.
Key indicators of both tablet market health as well as maturity is the number of unsold tablet units over time; price trends; and any parasitic effect the market has on competing technologies (such as tablets replacing laptops). We've already seen laptops having a dramatic impact on the desktop PC market, have tablets displaced sales of laptops or are customers purchasing them in addition to what they've already been buying?
In a way, the scenario reminds me of when SUVs became incredibly popular and volumes of good old fashioned "cars" were replaced by massive SUVs. SUVs have gone from niche to mainstay, while manufacturers keep declaring that "the car is BACK".
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| Kind of like this. |
Price-conscious customers may be forced to chose only one product, and that typically is a laptop due to its perceived versatility, power, and flexibility. Can a tablet make it in the workplace, for example?
The use of tablets as a respectable business tool has been well-proven, and an iPad with a keyboard is basically a small laptop in spirit. The caveat is that the i7-based Toshiba R700 laptop (that I use at work) is certainly small and light enough and certainly more than feature-rich enough to blow an iPad with an attached keyboard out of the weeds and given the cost of a high-end iPad plus keyboard case plus all of the new software that in 99% of the time isn't on any organization's enterprise license inventory, there isn't even a case to be made that the iPad is any cheaper. With the new crop of "convertible" laptops, the other advantage: the ability to easily read documents like you would a book, is being lost as well. However, the convenience of the slender, all-in-one-form factor (including always-on 3G) of the dedicated tablet cannot be denied and the sense that all of that power and control is resident within such a simple frame is almost science fictional.
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| I'll be honest, it's thin and light, but it swaps like an S.O.B. and the keyboard reinvents the concept of frustration. |
Within the last 4 years that the tablet market has taken off, advancements and expectations have accelerated. Apple's latest iPad Air is impossibly slender and light, yet it feels solid and substantial and the horsepower available coupled with the visual acuity of the screen would have gotten you burned at the stake as a witch back in the 1980's. We can only imagine what changes the next 4 years will bring us... which begs the question: has the tablet market reached a state of maturity? Will an alternative format supplant it in the short term? Can the market support the number of players and products that literally pollute the store shelves? Will customers begin to tire of having to constantly upgrade or is the market now mature enough to permit customers to use their tablet for longer than the lifespan of your average gerbil?
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| "Oh God, please, please, please, make that a long time..." |
Two years ago, the number of alternative tablets to the iPad available at Staples or Best Buy made even the giddiest tech guru feel numb. There still are an impressive number of competitors trying to play catch-up, but manufacturers are no longer scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. Of interest is the sheer variety of feature sets and pricepoints, pointing out that if there's a niche, someone's filling it. Key now is differentiation along untried boundaries such as larger 13" sizes and - my favorite - pressure sensitive pens. Also, don't forget to include all of those e-readers creeping into this space.
A question we have to ask ourselves is "has there been a crash in the tablet market?" Usually as a market matures there's often a selection process whereby the glut of starry-eyed competitors gets weeded down to a select few who can maintain the investment required to maintain relevancy. We've seen hp release - then dump at unbelievable price - a tablet that they no longer felt comfortable pursuing and the same thing happened with blackberry and their playbook. Are these signs of fallout due to oversaturation? Are customers full? Or has it more to do with hp and blackberry and their own personal situations?
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| Tablets, tablets, tablets, indeed. |
A huge part of making a customer feel attached to and happy with a product is the sense that the company "gets them" and believes in its product, another huge part is seeing that a lot of other people think so, too. So seeing iPad for sale in every office supply store, cell phone store, drug store, and even toy stores convinces you that you've made a safe choice. Furthermore, projecting the image of your product as "modern", "cool", "hip", and "useful to you" is a really good ploy to make when selling what is, essentially, a really expensive toy.
Not every competitor in this space has the luxury of an appealing brand. In an era where "sexiness" trumps "dependability", it's not even certain that people make intelligent purchasing decisions any more.
Given all of the above factors, looking at what the market is currently doing (still "feeling around") I'd have to say that the tablet market is still maturing and that in the near future we may see a clearer demarcation whereby the industry is segmented in this way:
- ultra-cheap e-readers, in black and white, less than $50
- small and inexpensive tablets in all sizes for around $150-200
- "regular" tablets with detachable keyboards that will essentially replace today's laptops, chromebooks, and ultrabooks $200-$10,000, available in larger sizes
- super-slim, style-conscious tablets that act like magazine-sized home entertainment devices
- specialty tablets for artists, doctors, etc. also available in larger sizes
