image-left-cyan-hero-e1400563125164Tablet sales in the usual size are on the wane as larger smartphones eat into their marketshare—but business uses are going to drive sales of larger tablets, says a new report by Strategy Analytics. The report suggests large tablet sales will have nearly doubled by the end of 2015, what with the rumored 13” iPad Pro and the 12” Microsoft Surface 3, while consumers push off smaller tablets in favor of phablets. Given that phones and tablets have a longer upgrade cycle, due to improved processors being unimportant, this could lead to sales falling off by as much as 30%.

It doesn’t surprise me that larger tablets are of more interest to business. Tablets are effectively becoming the new laptop now—especially the sort of hybrid device like the Surface that can attach to a more traditional keyboard. Given how much of business use revolves around documents, often represented as PDFs, having a portable device that can view them in their original size would make the most sense. This is also why larger e-ink devices like Sony’s Digital Paper were primarily business-focused and didn’t see much home use. Perhaps this also suggests the real target for Amazon’s rumored 12” tablet?

(Found via TechCrunch.)

1 COMMENT

  1. Check out the iOS and Android apps that Adobe has created. They’re quite clever, letting users do basic design and layout easily on a tablet. Then they can directly export the result into Adobe’s power apps on their computer. Adobe Comp, for instance, lets me play with the design of a book cover on my iPad. When I get it like I want it, I can literally be looking at the result with InDesign on my Mac in about 20 seconds.

    And it’s so easy, you don’t need to be a so-called ‘creative professional’ to use it. An ordinary sales guy tasked with creating a new sales brochure can use it. The one hitch is that, to do that design well, you need a larger screen. My iPad 3 is good enough, but a 12-inch or so might be better. That sort of thing may drive business adoption of larger tablets.

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-comp-cc-mockup-designs/id970725481?mt=8

    And in the case of lawyers and others in paper-ladden jobs, that larger screen lets them look at PDF documents at almost normal size without killing a lot of trees.

    ——-

    Kinja Deals has been covering a story that Teleread might want to pick up.

    —–
    We’ve seen some ridiculous deals on the Amazon Fire Phone before, but this is really something else. The unlocked handset is marked down to $130 today, and that includes a year of Amazon Prime, which is a $99 value by itself. Add in Amazon’s surprisingly-great magnetic headphones and the included USB charger, and you’re basically paying about a $10 premium for the phone itself. [Amazon Fire Phone + 1 Year of Prime, $130]

    http://deals.kinja.com/amazon-is-practically-giving-away-the-fire-phone-at-thi-1726708552
    —–

    The deal hinges on someone planning to go with Amazon Prime anyway, but the phone is unlocked. Those who buy, don’t have to sign a cellular contract. They don’t even need to use it as a cell phone.They could get an ebook reader along with a podcast and music player for their $10. It might be great for parents on tight budgets who have kids who want to be like their peers. And if what I’ve read is correct, even without any cellular contract, GSM specs require this phone would still work for 911 calls. That’d be great if you don’t want to give your kid their very own, unsupervised cell phone, but would like them to get help in an emergency.

    Teleread might want to look into just how good an ereader users will get for that $10. It’d let regular Amazon customers get into digital reading for a fraction of the cost of even the least expensive Kindles.

    If I weren’t delighted by my second-hand iPhone 5, I’d be tempted to give it a try—that and the fact that I don’t need Amazon Prime.

    –Mike

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.