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Wait a few years, children will grow old enough to inherit the old iPads, and there will be another boom. Thing is, iPads are powerful, even though Apple tried

Wait a few years, children will grow old enough to inherit the old iPads, and there will be another boom. Thing is, iPads are powerful, even though Apple tried their very best to cripple most of them by software updates. The vicious circle is, that people who are not power users (demanding the latest features) are the ones less likely to update the software. So here we are, with a ton of iPads working flawlessly with their stock firmware. I mean, even I still own a first gen, just for kicks (and synths, synthstation49).

EwanToo 9y ago
By then, kids will be firmly embedded in the Android ecosystem thanks to the $50 kindle tablets. Every parent I know (including myself) has 1 or 2 of these for entertaining children on long trips or rainy days.
danieldk 9y ago
Thing is, iPads are powerful, even though Apple tried their very best to cripple most of them by software updates. There are other plausible theories: 1. When the iPad was introduced, the average smartphone screen size was between 3 and 3.5". I couldn't find statistics for 2016, but I would guess that the average is just north of 5". Large phones have considerably more screen estate than they had in 2010, so a lot of things that were done on tablets in 2010 can now be done conveniently on a phone. 2. There was initially a lot of enthusiasm for the iPad and other tablets, but over time people realized that iPads are mostly limited to media consumption. The form factor is not convenient for serious work. In the end it's probably a mix of all of these: people wait longer before upgrading tablets; phablets have cannibalised tablets; most of the initial tablet hype/optimism has died out. https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smartphone-screen-size-statistics-and-trends-e61d77001ebe https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smar...

EwanToo 9y ago

By then, kids will be firmly embedded in the Android ecosystem thanks to the $50 kindle tablets. Every parent I know (including myself) has 1 or 2 of these for entertaining children on long trips or rainy days.

danieldk 9y ago

Thing is, iPads are powerful, even though Apple tried their very best to cripple most of them by software updates. There are other plausible theories: 1. When the iPad was introduced, the average smartphone screen size was between 3 and 3.5". I couldn't find statistics for 2016, but I would guess that the average is just north of 5". Large phones have considerably more screen estate than they had in 2010, so a lot of things that were done on tablets in 2010 can now be done conveniently on a phone. 2. There was initially a lot of enthusiasm for the iPad and other tablets, but over time people realized that iPads are mostly limited to media consumption. The form factor is not convenient for serious work. In the end it's probably a mix of all of these: people wait longer before upgrading tablets; phablets have cannibalised tablets; most of the initial tablet hype/optimism has died out. https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smartphone-screen-size-statistics-and-trends-e61d77001ebe https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smar...