Tablet sales are down because 10" tablets are not very useful devices, and 7" tablets are increasingly having their lunch eaten by phablets. (edit: And because

Tablet sales are down because 10" tablets are not very useful devices, and 7" tablets are increasingly having their lunch eaten by phablets. (edit: And because manufacturers push 10"s over 7"s, and some other reasons) The article is all about the purported benefits of tablets as being low maintenance, lower user burden, but a tablet is a form factor. There's no reason why you can't produce a machine with a keyboard and monitor that has the limited options and simplicity of set-up as a tablet, and indeed there have been periodic attempts to do that -- ChromeOS is perhaps the latest. It turns out that, contra the article, they haven't been wildly popular. The tablet form factor is never going to be a good choice for office workers who use MS Office, even with various plug-in keyboards and other hybrid approaches.