Mint Explainer: Why tablets failed to do what they promised—kill basic laptops

livemint.com:

Mint poll of four analysts, based on market researcher IDC India’s 2023 annual PC shipments data, estimated around 1.2 million tablets to have been shipped last year. This figure has remained stagnant—even as laptops saw a boost driven by the covid-19 pandemic’s work-from-home era. Why, though, did the claims not work out? Is there still time, or have tablets decidedly failed to do what they promised—take over the segment of mainstream laptops? Mint decodes.

This can be subjective. The primary claim of tablets was a larger display that could boost various entertainment and productivity use-cases. Over the years, companies such as Apple, Google, Lenovo and Samsung figured there was an opportunity to create slim devices that could replace the mainstream personal computer.

This largely became possible as mobile chipsets, which offer the performance inside, became more powerful—thus enabling a wider variety of tasks to be performed. Cooling systems also became more streamlined, which meant that a slim device could hold enough power to run desktop PC-grade software. The first example of such a hybrid experience in the mainstream consumer electronics industry was the Microsoft Surface—a tablet that ran a limited edition of the Windows 8 desktop operating system.

During its 7 May product launch, Apple not only unveiled the iPad Pro with a new processor, but also a keyboard attachment and a new stylus with haptic feedback. According to the company, this ensemble made Apple’s flagship tablet “just as good as a MacBook". The claim mirrored Apple’s attempts to place its top-drawer iPads as potential laptop killers—because of which the company has even segregated the iPadOS operating system since 2019, and launched keyboard covers