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On social platforms such as Zhihu and Xiaohongshu, when searching for "digital products that easily gather dust", there are two products that are almost always on the list. One is the Kindle e-reader, which is hailed as the "best instant noodle lid", and the other is the tablet computer, which is often ridiculed as "productivity before purchase, and iQiyi after purchase".

From the perspective of global sales, tablet computers have rapidly entered their first period of rapid growth since Apple released the iPad in 2010. By the end of 2014, annual sales of 230 million units prompted Canalys analysts to make an optimistic forecast that "tablet computer market sales will surpass personal PCs."

But no one expected that 2014 would be the last highlight of tablet computers. In the five years since then, tablet computer sales have fallen by nearly 40%.In the past two years, the tablet market has briefly recovered, thanks to the stimulation of online education and remote office demand. But it has fallen into a trough since 2021, and in 2023 it created a "historical low", with sales of 135 million units, a drop of nearly 100 million units from the peak.Faced with the attack from large-screen mobile phones and thin and light PCs, tablet computers seem to be powerless to fight back.

Why are tablets gathering dust? Will they fade out of consumers' view?

Big screen makes it big, big screen makes it fail

Remember when Steve Jobs released the iPad in January 2010, he described it as "a magical revolutionary device" and said that the iPad was Apple's best understanding of "what kind of device" consumers want. He emphasized that the iPad is a device between a smartphone and a laptop, but more "intimate and intuitive" than both, making it excellent at handling tasks such as web browsing, email, photos, videos and music.

At that time,Jobs did find a breakthrough track for tablet computersCompared to the iPhone 3GS, which only had a 3.5-inch screen at the same time, the first-generation iPad's 9.7-inch screen provided a larger display area than a smartphone, but was lighter and easier to carry than a laptop. This allowed users to easily browse and operate content on the go, at home or in the office, such as viewing web pages, watching movies, and playing games.

It can be said that the tablet computer was able to achieve rapid success after it was launched on the market mainly due to its larger screen size than mobile phones.Michael Gartenberg, Apple's former marketing director, once said: "The success of the iPad lies in the fact that it fills a blank market. This market needs a device that is neither as small as a mobile phone nor as bulky as a notebook. The iPad solves this problem just right."

However, the decline of tablet computers is precisely due to their moderate size. While tablet computers are becoming popular, smartphones are also rapidly evolving towards "large screens". From the initial narrowing of the upper and lower borders, to the introduction of full-screen design, the emergence of bangs screens and punch-hole screens, to today's four-side equal widths, through technologies such as COF and COP, today's smartphones have a front screen-to-body ratio of nearly 95%, and a display area of ​​about 6.9 inches is close to the limit of being held in one hand.

That is to say, since the release of the iPad, the display area of ​​mobile phone screens has increased by 4 times, not counting foldable phones, which can have a screen size of nearly 8 inches.In 2024, it will still be the "tablet" that everyone remembers., maintaining a display area of ​​about 10 inches. Although larger size options are also provided, such as 12.9 inches, the increase in weight further weakens the portability advantage.

In addition to the increasing size of smartphone screens,The trend of thin and light notebooks is also squeezing the living space of tablet computers.Especially as many thin and light laptops are striving to be lighter than 1kg, people would rather have a productivity tool that is light and thin enough and can also watch videos, rather than a tablet whose main function is entertainment and can only take into account light productivity.

Therefore, the positioning of tablet computers has gradually changed from the initial "blank track" to "attacked from both sides".IDC analysts said that with the popularity of "phablets" (smartphones with larger screen sizes), the use scenarios of tablets have been eroded, and consumers are more inclined to buy more portable devices rather than a tablet with similar functions but larger size.

The market should have been heading for its end, so why is it recovering?

Entering 2024, the tablet computer product, which was already unpopular, has seen a rebound.

According to data released by Canalys, global tablet shipments increased slightly by 1% in the first quarter of 2024 to 33.7 million units. Industry insiders said: "This growth phenomenon occurred after four consecutive quarters of year-on-year decline. The main reason behind it is the recovery of consumer spending and the stabilization of the global economy. This result is due to the combined effect of multiple positive factors."

“The tablet industry has had a positive start to 2024, and the rest of the year should bring further relief after a difficult 2023,” said Himani Mukka, research manager at Canalys. “Despite prolonged caution in consumer spending on tablets, vendors remain ambitious. New market entrants have been investing in the space, while traditional heavyweights are innovating to excite customers and drive new use cases.”

In terms of brand market share, as the pioneer of the tablet computer market, Apple still maintains its leading position with its complete hardware ecosystem and unique iPad OS. iPad shipments reached 12 million units, accounting for 36% of the market share. However, it should be noted that iPad sales fell by 13.9% year-on-year.

Himani Mukka mentioned: "Apple is expected to adopt a dual-layer OLED screen in the iPad Pro, which marks an important milestone in the preference of major tablet manufacturers for display technology. Supported by the gradual recovery, the tablet market is expected to stabilize above the pre-epidemic level."

It can be seen from this thatApple's poor performance in the first quarter was partly due to the lack of new products, and users were more likely to hold their money and wait and see.Among the TOP5 manufacturers, Samsung basically maintained its sales scale, while the market recovery mainly came from Huawei, ranked third, and Lenovo, ranked fourth. Their shipments were 2.7 million units and 2.1 million units, respectively, up 70% and 13% year-on-year, but there is still a big gap compared to the combined market share of 55% held by Apple and Samsung.

Entering the second quarter, the tablet market recovery continues.Data released by IDC show that global tablet computer market shipments in the second quarter of 2024 were 34.4 million units, a year-on-year increase of 22.1%.

Titanium Media APP analysis believes thatThe reasons for the high growth of the market are multifaceted. First, the market was cold last year.You know, the market shipments in the same period of 2021 reached 40.4 million units. At the same time, including Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, have concentrated on updating their products during this period. Driven by the product updates of leading manufacturers, the arrival of the market replacement cycle, and inventory replenishment, the result of market growth is also foreseeable.

Looking at the manufacturers, Apple's shipments increased in all regions outside China thanks to the strong updates of its three iPad series, and finally reached 12.3 million units, an increase of 18.2% year-on-year. Samsung ranked second and still did not do well, but among the top five, Xiaomi also replaced Amazon in the previous quarter with 2 million units shipped and entered the top five in the world.

Titanium Media APP noticed that Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi all had a good increase in shipments this quarter, with year-on-year sales increases of 16.7%, 40.3%, and 94.7%, respectively. Of course, the sales growth of these Chinese brands is also related to the inclusion of the "618 Shopping Festival" in the statistical period.With the launch of new products and the intensification of promotional efforts, the tablet computer market has attracted more attention from users.

In addition, Titanium Media APP also learned that many manufacturers are still accelerating their layout in this field. An executive of a mobile phone brand said in a conversation: "Currently, users pay more and more attention to the interconnected ecological experience between products of the same brand, especially for young groups such as college students, who often have more than one electronic device in their hands. Therefore, they begin to have a demand for a 'family bucket'. In addition, they also need the support of portable large-screen devices for learning and entertainment in their daily lives. Therefore, I think the recovery of the tablet market is traceable."

It is difficult to return to the peak, and tablet computers are still in an awkward position

With the help of many favorable factors, the tablet computer seems to be "resurrected or alive", but from the perspective of long-term development, Titanium Media APP still believes thatIt is difficult for it to shake off its own “awkward” label.As mentioned earlier, the market recovery at the data level this year is based on many factors, the most important of which is that "the performance in 2023 was too poor."

From the product and technology level, Apple, Huawei and many Android manufacturers have almost gone "all in" on tablets this year, with the latest SoC, the best screens, lower prices, larger screen sizes, a more complete cross-terminal ecosystem, and even the addition of generative AI as a functional selling point.

But even so, this only brings the market back to the same level as in 2018, which was the low point of the tablet market fluctuations. It is almost certain that if there had not been a sudden surge in demand for online education and remote work in 2019, the tablet development curve would have continued to decline.

Forrester analysts have also pointed out that although Apple and other manufacturers continue to launch new models, these new products have not significantly improved in functionality and user experience compared to previous generations, and therefore cannot stimulate large-scale market demand.

After all, tablet computers may have had a certain degree of "irreplaceability" when they were invented, but nowadays they are too easily replaced.

In terms of portability and convenience, tablets are not as good as mobile phones, and in terms of productivity and work efficiency, they cannot be compared with PCs. In addition, in the past ten years of development, there has not been a "killer application" dedicated to tablets. The APPs running on it are either the "large-screen version" ported from mobile phones, or the "lightweight version" simplified from PCs. This is also the fundamental reason why it has been criticized and become a "dusty artifact."

Tablet computers may not be able to get rid of the embarrassing label of "neither high nor low" until the day they fade out of people's sight.(This article was first published on Titanium Media APP. Author: Deng Jianyun. Editor: Zhong Yi)