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> "The tablet is going to replace at least the home computer."

I don't know about that. But what I think is still a huge deal, and far more likely, is that families will trend back toward one shared PC in the den and use multiple secondary devices for individual use.

While I don't think you can get away without a home PC, you can certainly share one more easily when all but a handful of tasks are doable (if not more enjoyable) on a tablet.

And that's going to hurt a lot of home PC purchasing, with the notable exception of when the kids go off to college.

> While I don't think you can get away without a home PC

Are you saying this about today, May 18 2011? If you are, I suppose you might be right. But by, say, the end of the year, or maybe next year, I think you'll be absolutely wrong. The tablet market moves fast and soon there won't be a single task that isn't only doable but indeed more enjoyable on the tablet.

Right now, my Xoom outperforms (measured in my happiness levels, not CPU speed) all my home PCs for every single task except software development. I see no reason at all to have a home PC if you own a Xoom or similar tablet. I just bought the nice bluetooth keyboard which means that now even composing blog entries or writing emails is nicer on the tablet.

Everything's changing, and fast. It would be shortsighted to suggest that everyone needs an i7, 4GB of RAM, 2TB of storage and a DVD drive in 2011. Desktops will become more and more of a niche device, used only by nerds, while tablets and their descendants will take over the whole consumer market.

I'm saying today or the immediate future.

What you'd need to replace the home computer, at the minimum, would be support for 'docking' the device into a larger display and keyboard, which suggests mouse (to avoid gorilla-arm) and implies apps that can detect that mode switch and alter themselves accordingly.

If you've tried to use keyboards on current tablet software designed for touch, you've seen that they're as ill-supported as touch is on software designed for kb/m. Until the OS and apps can provide reliable navigation and control from the keyboard (and optional mouse), they're a non-feature. They're no closer to popular consumer adoption than the last round of Windows-based tablets.

Short of that mode switch, there are simply too many times when the ergonomics of tablets are inappropriate or less desirable. And an older PC (that people already own) will be the logical choice for those tasks.

And you'd also need a better printing solution. As much as I personally hate printing, schools and business are moving very slowly on that front and a lot of personal PC use revolves around creating documents to be printed. And the current solutions aren't there for the average family.

The iPad and other recent tablets have HDMI.

I agree they are not there yet, but every little improvement widens the tasks for which they can replace a PC. Even some development tasks can be replaced now (e.g. using ssh). This will only increase with time, as both hardware and software is improved for the tasks people use them for. At the moment, tablets are barely nipping at the heels of the PC, being alternative to a 2nd/3rd PC http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20063776-260.html - but for purposes that the PC is more-than-good-enough for, the tablets are approaching being good enough. As they reach each tier, people will switch, for the other benefits (portable, lighter, slimmer, cheaper, less hassle, cooler).

When PCs became good enough to replace minicomputers, the effect was catastrophic. The long-awaited disrapture.

I think if your definition of a tablet includes an optional keyboard and mouse then you may be right (I see you bought a keyboard). I just think there are too many tasks that require more precise input than just a touch based screen. Most people when talking about tablets don't include those in their thinking, but it is definitely the way to go to maximize the functionality of the device.
A lot of households still use personal computers to do their taxes and manage other financial/important docs, create things for school which is often in MS apps, or archive photos and video, etc. A lot of these functions would just be far too cumbersome on a tablet and I really can't see any of them being replaced in the reasonable future.
Tablets can't do serious gaming.
99% of people don't give a toss about serious gaming.

The iPad has become the primary gaming device for me - I rarely ever play video games elsewhere.

Also, gaming consoles exist. A PC was never necessary for serious gaming.
untrue, but it was more than ten years ago...
So? "Serious gaming" fits nicely with the desktop niche I just described. Plenty of people will continue to buy desktops for just that reason - that's the only device that'll do what they need. My point is that soon none of those desktop needs will be mainstream.

Also, quad core tablets will be out in the next year or two. What on earth makes you think they won't have serious games?

for serious gaming they can go with consoles...better than going with PC anyways, since with gaming those gets obsolete a lot faster.

If you don't need to do gaming on PC, you can change the PC once every 5 years. But if you do, you'd have to do that twice as often.

Actually, a cutting edge PC isn't really all that necessary for gaming nowadays. Since a large portion of games are cross-platform between 360/PS3 and the PC, you just need a PC as good as one of those. I spent less than a $1000 (including monitor, kb, 1TB HD, etc) on a decent PC about 2.5 years ago, and it's still able to run most everything I run into on max settings. Until we see a new generation of consoles, or something like another Crysis, you really don't need to upgrade your PC for gaming.

Besides, some of us prefer keyboard/mouse and modding ability.

Nah, but games consoles can.
Not as well as a PC. PC gaming and console gaming are two totally different worlds
I came here to say something similar. I think it may also replace computer upgrade purchases. That is, it's not strictly necessary to replace the current computer, but gosh is it running slow. But if the family uses the iPad more, they can tolerate a slow computer during the word processing and bill-paying.
I have no home computer...I have my Laptop for work, and everyone else uses an iPad or phone.
Of course it's going to replace the home computer. Tablets are becoming the home computer. If tablets browse the web, access email, play music, and more, why would most of the public need a PC? Only those with technical needs would require a tower and monitor on their desk.
The numbers don't add up...

PC sales are about 85-90M per quarter. iPad was selling at 4.7M that quarter. If every person who was going to buy a PC bought an iPad it would be a 5.5% reduction. Consumers are about half the market, so maybe you say 11% of the consumer market. And that again is assuming EVERY iPad sale is a lost consumer PC sale. HP dropping 20%+ is bigger than the iPad.

You forgot about Mac :)
> Tablet owners are actually more likely than US online consumers in general to have recently bought a PC

http://blogs.forrester.com/sarah_rotman_epps/11-05-17-hps_ea...

The price point is similar. Both browse the internet just fine. But one has Angry Birds and FaceTime. One is new and cool. One is dusty, has viruses and keeps reminding you that your software license may be non-genuine.
Buying an iPad is buying a second device of a kind different than anything you currently have.

Buying another computer is done to replace one that is obsolete (something that is less frequent over the last several years).

In other words, computer sales were destined to "fall off" a bit anyway. Once tablet devices reach a saturation point with limited benefit for upgrading, they will suffer a similar fate.

You are correct, but the event you're taking about (the "everyone who can afford one has a computer" event) happened years ago. We're already there. Destiny is history.

That said, things never really decline, because prices are going down, the need for computing is going up, and so the market is always expanding and sales just steadily grow now and forever.

You only ever see these kinds of false "declines" where people are really just shifting to a different kind of computer.

It seems like a pretty big jump to determine causality here - nowhere in the article do they mention consumer studies indicating consumers have purchased the IPad in lieu of a PC. Until they do that, this seems like speculation at best.

For instance, maybe people realized that a new PC doesn't buy them anything in terms of performance for their web browsing and document editing needs.

When sales of pcs suddenly start tanking right as a new near substitute is released to blockbuster sales and then the chairman of Asus comes out and blames the iPad himself it seems like a pretty small jump and speculation at worst.

It does seems like giving the iPad all the credit might miss that smartphones themselves partially replace the PC. I dont have a tablet but often I'll just sit on the couch checking RSS or otherwise fiddling with my phone while the computer sits unused a meter away.

Anecdotally, I know several people who have replaced their computers completely with iPads. They won't be buying new laptops any time soon (and yes, they use their iPads for work).
Anecdotally, I didn't bother to set up two monitors when I started my current job (since I was the sole IT person) and after about six months I added one since there are a few lying around and was blown away by how much my productivity improved.

Granted, I'm doing development, but most tasks involving a computer are positively impacted by increases in screen real estate. I've had the bookkeeping office say they won't work with less than two monitors, and one of them needs to be largish. Given the spreadsheets they work with, I see the need.

There are plenty of tasks where the lack of real estate might seem to be unimportant, but what it comes down to is that when you're trying to fit anything of nontrivial complexity on a screen the size of the iPad, you use more and more mental energy on context-switching as the complexity increases.

This comment is interesting, because when the iPad first was announced, I had a lot of people give me the "oversized iPod" line and I tried to explain that even just significantly increasing screen real estate was enough to open the device to massively increased functionality. Glad to see some analogous, anecdotal support.
I'm not saying there aren't work tasks that require a proper workstation. I'm saying that even for work, there are some contexts where a full-on computer isn't needed. The people I referred to spend a lot of their time meeting people, doing sales, networking, responding to emails, sending presentations around, etc.

If there are work contexts where the iPad is sufficient, it's not a big leap to imagine that there are even more non-work contexts where that is also the case.

If tablets really are the future of computing, then developing countries can bridge the digital gap quickly with inexpensive tablets. http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/35-tablet-from-india-look...

Imagine 500 millions like these in every Indian's pocket.

Those Indians, they sure have big pockets! ;^) Jokes aside, that's a good point. When you have your own computing device, you have the chance to play around with it instead of just following a script ("click the blue e, type facebook, press enter..."). These low-cost models lack 3G and have a horrible battery life, but if they become popular, I'm sure we will see enterprising individuals opening hole-in-the-wall cafés offering cheap wi-fi and charging cradles.
I worry a lot about this, because users have a lot less freedom with the iPad than with PCs; they're a lot more vulnerable to Apple, which can abuse its power in the same way that Facebook can.

If the iPad or something like it wins, disruptive innovation in computers is dead, because incumbents will control the market, and incumbents don't like disruptive innovation.

I worry too, but the good news is that Honeycomb looks like it may well escape the near-death experience of launching too early with the Xoom. If you gloss over the small glitches nearly everyone who uses it loves it.

Fingers crossed we're heading to at least two viable tablet OSes, if not three (number three being a total wildcard, but I would probably pick windows 8 if only because eventually business adoption will give the momentum).

Honeycomb is still proprietary, isn't it? And Motorola is notorious for locking down its devices so users can't control them, even if the users do have a version of software that they want to install. (Edit: glad to hear they aren't doing that on this one.)
> Honeycomb is still proprietary, isn't it?

It is proprietary but users have enormously more freedom than they do with the iPad. Just the ability to side load apps makes a universe of difference. Further I'd be very surprised if most of the current crop of tablets don't get the upgrade to (open source) ice cream sandwich at the end of the year.

> And Motorola is notorious for locking down its devices

The Xoom bootloader is unlocked, so presuming ICS gets released it should be possible for people to flash it on there even if Motorola doesn't want to do it.

I agree that incumbents don't like disruptive innovation (in general), but who says that a) Apple wouldn't mind as they've in general done a phenomenal job of interrupting themselves before others have had the chance over the last twenty years or b) that another new company won't unseed Apple as Apple (while not in market share, but in prominence and recently also income) has unseeded Microsoft.
Unseated.
Thanks. I was watching the NBA playoff coverage as I typed that. Clearly it pervaded my subconscious.
Tablets are purely a very short-lived stop gap (think a few years).

The future is phone sized devices with foldable screens. Use it small when you're on the go. But when you want to sit on the couch or on the bus, you open it up.

The dedicated tablet becomes a niche product for those people that need the full power of a dedidicated large machine.

http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-develops-sweet-foldable-amo...

Is it prognostication day already? I dissent.

I call the future is: Your world in your phone sized device backed by the cloud, with the option to use anonymous, mindless larger displays when in close proximity. (Bonus good future if I can also leap to a processor in an anonymous proximate device for speed.)

EOM

Reasoning: Producing enough light for a larger display requires power, requires mass, interferes with the light weight of the phone. Decouple the display and the phone. Ditto for CPU power and storage.

I call the future is: Your world in your phone sized device backed by the cloud, with the option to use anonymous, mindless larger displays when in close proximity.

I've seen the future, and that's not it. :-)

Too expensive, and just can't be ubiquitous. How many large displays can you put in a bus or in the stands of a football game or at McDonalds?

With that said, such devices will exist, but they'll be your TVs in the house.

And on battery life. Even today people can get some decent efficiencies, and it will get better. Here's what Engadget had to say about the Kyocera Echo (a dual screen phone, with a 1370mAh battery, which is smaller than the iPhone 4s):

"We took a different approach. We charged the phone fully and then went about using it as we normally would for an entire day -- checking emails, browsing through TweetDeck, zoning out on a conference call for an hour or so, watching a bit of Sprint TV and playing entirely too much full-screen Pac-Man. We'd say 70 percent of our usage had both panels open, which is likely far greater than what you'd see after the novelty wears off. That said, we managed around 15 hours of use before it petered out, and on a second try -- one that involved far less dual-screen action -- we squeezed out 22 total hours. "

15 hours isn't ideal, but with some work that we're seeing out of Samsung, I don't think 24 hours is out of the question in a year or two at all. And that's with a relatively small battery.

EDIT: You have to love cowards that downvote, but don't dare say a peep.

Producing enough light for a larger display requires power, requires mass, interferes with the light weight of the phone. Decouple the display and the phone.

Correct. Which is why my prediction is a heads-up display in glasses, driven by the "phone" in your pocket. Computer displays as we know them will mostly go away, but we'll effectively have infinitely sized screens.

There's no way a screen the size of the iPad is going to fit in your pocket in the next 10-20 years. Not because it can't fold, but because it weights a pound and a half. The battery alone is 5+ ounces, more than the entire weight of an iPhone.

Dedicated tablets are here to stay.

Display efficiency is getting better all the time. If PenTile ever becomes reasonable, that has a 40% reduction in power.

And if you gave me the choice to carry a heavier phone, but get rid of a tablet, I'd do it.

Lastly, I suspect the size of these tablets would be 7" rather than 10".

I didn't realize the reason why 7" is bad before I got an iPad and started to read web pages, pdf documents etc.

For 7" to take over, you need to change standard for page sizes (or operate the eyes of everyone over 40).

Android tablets can reflow the text on zoom.
The losts are in revenues, not units.

It's entirely possible that people opt for lower priced computers instead of iPads.