back to article Taiwan source forecasts mass exit from tablet biz

PC companies will begin to exit the tablet market in 2012, it has been claimed. The notion, put forward by "sources from [the] upstream supply chain" cited by DigiTimes, is that Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and others will "gradually phase out from the market", leaving it to the likes of Apple and Amazon, who not only sell hardware …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    LOL

    What a crock of shit.

    1. N13L5
      Coffee/keyboard

      not

      Its a good article.

      The majority of Tablets are purely used for consumption. People who actually use them for work exist, but most businesses that benefit from a tablet have had their own rugged, purpose designed tablets, shippers like FedEx, UPS, Warehousing companies and others.

      Consumer styled tablets will become free subsidized content selling gizmos pretty soon.

      Even the most massive hype doesn't last indefinitely, thankfully.

  2. Jad
    Stop

    Giving away free

    "The source's view is that Amazon and fellow US retailer Barnes & Noble will eventually give away their tablets, subsidising the price entirely from content sales."

    no they wont ... it wouldn't work ...

    "Low Energy Lightbulbs" were given away free and pretty much ignored, they sold much better at a very small price.

    Loft insulation likewise ... government grants were taken up better when they were a "money off" scheme rather than a "free" scheme ...

    they'd be better off selling the tablets with vouchers for the same amount in online content ...

  3. streeeeetch

    I think not

    With all due respect to your source I doubt this will last long if it's true. I suggest that the tablet form factor will wipe the floor given a little more time because of the generation growing up with touch screen devices.

    Walk down any street, sit on any bus or train and look at the kids and their phones. They will drive the market.

  4. tmTM

    Hogwash

    Tablets will continue to grow, next year will see the introduction of much faster chipsets like Tegra 3 which will give them the power to take on netbooks.

    The only reason sales have been poor so far is companies putting the price far to close to that of an ipad, and people just won't pay ipad money for anything other than an ipad

  5. big_D Silver badge
    Stop

    Partly true...

    The manufacturers were looking at the tablet market as a way of making money. The PC market doesn't really generate enough profit, you have to sell ridiculous numbers or you have to have a niche, where you can charge a "reasonable" amount for your hardware.

    They thought the tablet market was it. But only Apple can sell a tablet at a resonable price (from the point of view of the manufacturers) and that is based on the ecosystem they have built up around it.

    There are several Android tablets, but they aren't much cheaper than the iPad (at least not the halfway decent ones). Apple can afford to sell at a "good" price, because they are making their 30% on apps, books and magazines, plus music and video streaming products.

    Android manufacturers can't offer this (with the exception of Amazon and B&N). Google is offering value add services to the Android platform and they are making money from it. The likes of htc, Samsung etc. aren't making (much) money from the ecosystem (the odd app sold through their portal, perhaps). Without that income to help subsidise the purchase price of the hardware, they can't hope to compete with the likes of Amazon and Apple.

    The question is, what can Windows 8 bring to the tablet market? But, again, subsidised tablets aren't going to exist. Microsoft have the ecosystem, but the manufacturers are left in the cold, like Android.

    That means, tablets with a manufacturers eco-system can always be sold cheaper than those living off the eco-system of a third party. Either they have to sell them with wafer thin margins, and hope they can sell tens of millions to compensate for the low margin, or they look for a market, where they can actually make enough money to survive and grow...

    Sony might be the only other manufacturer that could compete here, with their music, film and PS businesses backing them up.

  6. pompurin

    Sony have lost the trust and respect of most consumers through their rootkits and security exposures. I don't think they could cut it anymore.

    I have used a tablet but felt so lazy using it. It doesn't encourage me to do anything productive with my time and when I looked at the price I was put off even more.

  7. Keep Refrigerated
    Alien

    Tablets will go the way of the netbook...

    ... if Windows becomes dominant through consumer ignorance again.

    ***The Rise and Fall of the Netbook***

    1. Consumer spies mini form factor cheap, portable, capable device for surfing, email, docs.

    2. Consumer enjoys netbook for a time.

    3. Reign of the netbook begins.

    4. Microsoft says, "I want some of that", brings XP back off the shelf, twists oem arms.

    5. Consumer says "Ooh, netbook now with Windows" answers to primal herd instinct that says stick with brand no matter how unsuitable to the task.

    6. The cheap, portable, capable intent of the Netbook is poisoned by the MS chalice, slowly dying.

    7. Consumer complains "Windows is a dog on Netbook".

    8. Rise of the fondleslab. Netbook cries out "Et tu, Jobs?"

    9. Consumer no longer enjoys netbook.

    10. Reign of perfectly useful and capable netbooks comes to an end.

    Disclaimer: I own 2x netbooks and 1x (non-jobsian) fondleslab

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sooner or later...

    ...the morons who buy these toys have got to pull their heads outta their arses.

  9. BritishEnglish

    "I suggest that the tablet form factor will wipe the floor given a little more time because of the generation growing up with touch screen devices.

    Walk down any street, sit on any bus or train and look at the kids and their phones. They will drive the market."

    'The market' being the market of X-factor-watching, passive-consuming, give-my-brain-a-rest, 'watchers'?

    i.e. Not the market of 'do-ers'?

    Anyone with two brain cells and some typing fingers knows that *all* 'smart'-phones and tablets are 15th rate, c*** input devices without even touching one.

    Anyone with a single brain cell can spend a few hundreds on a me2Phone/Pad and slowly, gradually, after lots of finger-swiping and waving their phoneblet at everyone they imagine could give a t***, they, too, will find it to be a c*** input device.

    Not really the 'market' that IT people work in, though perhaps the one that Creatives (don't you lurve nounless adjectives) wander through in their latest new-knot scarf, fondle-slabbing as they go.

    Bitter? Cynical? Twisted.

    Yeah, man. Right on.

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