The Tablet Market Isn't All iPads

“when I complain about iPad limitations, it gets misinterpreted as a desire to have it work just like other computers do. That’s not it — I worry that it is subtly narrowing our sense of what computers can do without our even noticing it.”

From the @verge article, The iPad is still finding its place ten years in https://www.theverge.com/tech/2020/1/28/21110994/ipad-limitations-user-interface-10-years

Worth a read. Then, come back here.

Ready? Okay:

What I find hugely interesting is how the tech press and retailers have decided the iPad is The Only Tablet. Walk into the local electronic repair/resell place, try to buy a used Android. None. They all but laugh at you. They may actually giggle a bit.

Um… they are wrong. Bias breaks stuff. Broken down by OS (instead of the manufacturer every dumbass analyst insists on!), 70% of tablet sales are Android.

I see a lot of them used for serious work, so I design for them sometimes. And this has been the truth for years. If the androids are getting replaced by anything, it’s:

1) Windows. Often tablets, sometimes just touch laptops.

2) Chromebooks. Around 1/5th off the laptop market (more than MacOS!) is Chromebooks.

And check out #2 there. Chromebooks are pretty much Android tablets. If Google decided to yell about this, they'd be in the Tablet sector instead of the Laptop sector. And then we'd all be admitting that Android dominates tablet sales, that the convertible tablet IS the work computer, and what is wrong with Apple, sticking with the clear line between old-school-laptop and pure-screen-tablet.

Except for the fanbois — and too much of the tech press are Apple fanbois — iPads are the lone voice in the wilderness trying to make a pure screen tablet be a computer.

Everyone else settled on convertibles. Sometimes full bore Windows, sometimes slimmed-down Android-ish.

With touch and folding to tablet (touch or pen) form factor if if that’s convenient. Or unfolding/docking into a keyboard/trackpad when you need to type.

So, if you want to stand out with your tablets-as-the-future-of-work thinkpiece: don’t just buy whatever Apple said last. Go look at more devices, and how more people in the real world use them.

There’s interesting stuff going on when you get past the surface buzz. Look for it. Design for what your users actually have, and how they actually work.