Why Consumers Won't Buy Tablet Computers

(CBS)  Rumors have it Apple is a month away from announcing a tablet computer. Another tablet, the Crunchpad, is also due for imminent release. These and other fine keyboardless computers get great play on gadget blogs, but in the real world, this category doesn't work. Why technophiles keep waiting for the killer tablet computer is beyond me. Few real humans want one, especially at the prices that they will have to sell for.

Tablet computers--elegant slates that you operate with a touch screen--are attractive if you're a sci-fi fan or have an unlimited gadget budget. There's something functionally beautiful about a computer that's all screen and nothing else, and where your interaction is directly through that screen, not an intermediary like a keyboard or mouse. The concept works great on smartphones, but not so much on full-sized devices.

What you can do with a screen-only computer gets limited when you expand the device beyond pocket size. There are two big limitations. First, you need a keyboard for doing real work. At least most people do. Perhaps a generation of kids will grow up that are as speedy on a virtual keyboard as they are on a real one, but until then anyone who does more than write quick e-mails and Twitter messages on a computer will want to take a keyboard with them. Typing on the screen, even if you can do it, is an ergonomic disaster. Either you have to keep your hands up in the air (if the computer is mounted vertically in front of you) or you have to hunch over your screen to see it. Maybe it's the national chiropractors association that's pushing this form factor.

While a tablet may be great for browsing the Web and viewing media, it's too big to replace a phone and too limited to carry around as a work computer. People will need their keyboarded Netbooks and notebooks for real work. Tablets, like other tweener devices, ultramobile PCs and Netbooks, are accessories to real computers. Most people can't do enough on them to justify the price, although they're sure nice to have if you have extra money for a gizmo that sits between your big computer and your phone, both in size and function.

As an accessory, tablets are too expensive. If Apple releases a tablet in the rumored $700 to $800 price range, it will die. Not because people won't love it and lust for it, but because they won't be able to justify it.

I actually have higher hopes for the Crunchpad due to its Web focus and its lower price. But even then, at the rumored $400 price point, I still believe it's too dear for real human beings on a real budget, and it will reportedly lack local resources (storage) to make it a workable solution in a world of spotty connectivity. Geeks might like it, and buy them as living room couch Web-surfing computers, but for families looking to address real technology needs, a Netbook like a $200 Acer Aspire One offers a better bet: it has a real keyboard, its own storage, and you can take it on the road and do real work on it, like a notebook computer or a Netbook.

Of course, you'll probably be able to plug a keyboard into any of these yet-to-be-released tablets (see the Always Innovating tablet Netbook), but you'll pay extra for the hardware and it'll mean more gear to keep track of and prop up on your desk.

For specialized applications, tablet computers can and do work. The Aeryon spybot uses a tablet computer to control it. And in the consumer space, Amazon's Kindle, a tablet by form factor even though it has a vestigial keyboard, works because it but does things no other device can do at all: it can buy books instantly, almost anywhere, and display them on a screen nearly as easy to read as a printed page.

I love beautiful and elegant tech toys as much as any other geek, but geek love isn't enough to make a real market. Tablets need to cost a lot less and do a lot more before they establish a foothold in the consumer market.

By Rafe Needleman

[davhum75]

It may be that the tablet has a limited market but a laptop or netbook with a multi touch capacitive screen and physical key board but no mouse or track pad in my opinion would. The application and OS developers could make use of a grater array of gestures than are possible with a mouse.

[ansur-2009]

When it comes to the netbook, laptop, desktop, and tablet world of computing cheap, fast, and less time intensive are key. Netbooks the simpler ones with 10' screens live in $400-ville. Laptops are slowly replacing desktops as the primary computer. Desktops are for more extreme heavy lifting now are for the ability to upgrade and tweak for the most part. Tablets are sadly a joke in that everything they are being pushed for are covered by the previous devices. The only way tablets can compare is if they end up being a good management tool that is similar to a PSP in how it works rather than a computer. The price for any technology needs to be weighted against what it really does for us and if we would use it for what it does. Basically, a tablet is an over sized color kindle with the ability to play media like a PSP. If it had a blu-ray UMD drive with a direct RAM access solid state storage and was designed to be used like a kiosk then it would be more worth thinking about. The problem is they are marketed as laptops without keyboards. Things can be done to make them more marketable and worth the money but no one wants to invest the time and effort into something that is seen as a toy or an industrial management tool.

[barbaram99]

It will never work as users want more and laptops have it all.

[Geoge365]

Tablet Computer is thin and light, but not cheap. As to performance, not so excellent. Just leave it.

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[Sloughfoot]

"As an accessory, tablets are too expensive. If Apple releases a tablet in the rumored $700 to $800 price range, it will die. Not because people won't love it and lust for it, but because they won't be able to justify it."

I belive that same thing was said by many in referring to the PC way back when. Then it was $1200-$1500 in 80's dollars for, a 5" floppy drive DOS machine. Look where that went in 2 decades. We'll see this electronic evolution continue as long as man can keep from killing himself.

[brianbwb-2009]

It is refreshing to see a review that isn't just a disguised ad for the latest toy, like Mr. Magid gushing over how this new, unaffordable, and barely workable addition to the tech industry is the greatest thing since the invention of the thin ribbed condom.

The points raised here are valid, especially about how it is impractical for today's depression adjusted budgets, how the lack of a keyboard makes use impractical for all but the most basic uses, which can be done much more cheaply.

Also Apple's habit of pricing aimed at the luxury market will backfire, the days when "it is expensive, so it must be good", and "you get what you pay for" have fallen to the machinations of greedy capitalism.

For $800, I can buy a laptop that does everything these things can do and much more, some are even approaching the "heavy lifting" category, usually the purview of desktops.

Yesterday's story of how NYC coffee shops are cutting wi-fi to increase table turnover, illustrates a point that the usefulness of such items is ever diminishing.

For $800, I can DIY a monster desktop, quad-core, terabyte storage, and 8gbs of memory, for that "professional" level use.

Thank you Mr. Needleman, for your realistic appraisal. Hopefully more reviewers like yourself will help bring the industry back in line with reality.

[tjolley11]

I have a Dell Mini 9 and I immediately installed OSX. I can, and do, use that machine on a daily basis for everything except video encoding. Emails, movies, work processing, data copies/moves, youtube, social networking, IM, etc, etc.

You can already stream video to these devices. All you need to do is share out your desktop drive and stream away. Nothing to it. I stream to mine all the time, as well as stream music.

I really don't see a reason to get a full-sized laptop now. I have a desktop for any heavy lifting I need to do, and I have the netbook for the other 90% of things I need to do.

[Hosheen]

What are you, a Luddite? People didn't believe in hoe computers or laptops, either. It seems they were a little off the mark there, too.

An Apple notebook with a Macintosh interface that would allow you to have e-books, movies, videos, and even do e-mail or tweets would be a great boon for travelers. The "netbooks" were panned, too and they are now the hottest-selling item in the laptop market. Smaller smarter, and better, always sells. Apple is the best at this and I predict they will make this concept fly. How much you wanna bet?

[door331]

if they really want these "netbooks" to catch on they need to find more functionality with them. My suggestion is that they use the netbook as sort of a remote desktop controller-- you have your desktop PC sitting at home and your netbook is the on-the-go remote control. It would be even better if they figured out a way to make the netbooks stream the video from the desktop in a similar fashion as the cloud gaming tech that has been developing a lot of buzz. This way the netbook does not need very much hardware to run a fully functional computer.

[ansur-2009]

Netbooks do actually do what you would like them to do eeePC can and do run streaming video from a network storage server. Mine plays my music list rather well it also plays movies from my storage server and internet video out to my TV. It also responds well to a wireless keyboard with touchpad. Some of them have HDMI out so that even the video games I play on them can be output to my TV. I use many cloud apps as well as many local apps on my machine so I am not sure where you might think that a netbook can not do these things. I was thinking of getting one for my parents so they could use it as a simple media player that could also be used as a portable computer. The netbook also has a high density SD port so that you can use large SD chips for small, fast, and low energy storage. They are quite versatile the swivel display models are even a cross between these two technologies.