"Crashing" tablet sales give new hope to PCs, Best Buy CEO says

[Shawn Knight]

Apple may not be the only company struggling with weak tablet sales. In a recent interview with Re/code, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said sales of tablets have boomed and are now crashing as the volume has really gone down in the last several months.

Elaborating on the subject a bit, Joly said tablets have been an unbelievable phenomenon. Thinking back, he was unable to come up with a category that's taken off so quickly and so big in the history of tech.

The executive is absolutely correct and what we are likely looking at now is saturation. Penetration happened so quickly that we're now looking at a replacement market, just as we're seeing with smartphones. And let's not forget the fact that large-screen smartphones are also cannibalizing tablet sales.

Innovation hasn't been spectacular on tablets in the past year so consumers aren't as compelled to go out and buy the latest and greatest when their existing slate meets all of their needs, he added.

Elsewhere, Joly said they've actually noticed a revival of the PC business at Best Buy during the first quarter thanks in part to Microsoft finally ending support for Windows XP. He also noted that it helps that laptops are becoming more versatile as devices like two-in-ones are both a tablet and a laptop.

Take the Microsoft Surface, for example. Is it a tablet or a laptop? Joly believes it's both and he doesn't think the laptop has had its last word.

Do you think laptops and PCs in general will make a comeback? Are tablets just a fad like netbooks?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/57577-crashing-tablet-sales-give-new-hope-to-pcs-best-buy-ceo-says.html

 

[Guest]

Maybe because now everyone has almost two tablets. Also maybe because people realice they can do a lot more on a pc than with a tablet on their couch.

 

[davislane1]

Maybe because now everyone has almost two tablets. Also maybe because people realice they can do a lot more on a pc than with a tablet on their couch.

I speculate it has less to do with the utility of a tablet and more to do with diminishing returns. The reason tablet sales are collapsing isn't because they aren't useful. Remember, relatively few people purchase tablets as a desktop replacement. The sales problem is that once you have one, there's little reason to buy another.

Think of tablets like shirts. If you develop a shirt that never wrinkles and never gets dirty, you're going to sell a lot of that shirt... year one. After that, sales will drop of a cliff because everyone will already have a closet full of them and no need to replace them.

 

[texasrattler]

To many companies make one is the problem. So as the article stated, the market is saturated with tablets. That's a big reason.

MS surface isn't the reason for any resurgence for PCs. That's just a plug to get them hyped up. PC sales are back because they are the best all around device. They can be just as cheap as a tablet now and still do more. Schooling and work, make the PC or Mac the best choice. With 2 in 1s now being really popular and the new 360 flex models by HP and ASUS are doing well. Lenovo has had them awhile but usually are just small ones and not many even know the Lenovo brand.
PCs are alive and doing very well. Expect very good deals now with back to school. Best Buy themselves even have a back to school offer called College Student Deals. Just use your schools .edu account and you can get a new HP 360 flex for $549, retails for $799. A friend just got one.

Even Apple is doing well with it's mac books, they just refreshed their Mac Pro retina display models.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Yet Samesung and crApple will keep charging those ridiculous prices for there tablets while sales crash.

Reports of the PC's death have been absurd and premature. They were caught in a perfect storm of tablets, phablets and smartphones and it was always just a matter of riding it out until the market was supersaturated and also people realised they can't actually do any serious work on these devices. The best device the Surface Pro is absurdly priced and dearer than many superior ultrabooks. PC sales will always remain strong - despite the so-called collapse of PC sales they still shipped in staggering numbers. Now we are seeing them pick up again. Also PC form factors are changing and small cases are making them far more desirable for many put off by large hulking towers.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

It's not all about the tablets after all? Windows 8 = oops!

I equate tablets with dehydrated foods. They are good in emergency situations. But I would never use one within 1000 feet of any desktop I had access too.

 

[tonylukac]

I don't have a tablet and don't plan on getting one. I'm finding it hard to see lately and holding the magnifying glass and the tablet just wouldn't work. Take a typing class. You usually take a driving class to drive. What do you learn in high school? A lady at bingo was demonstrating how fabulous her ipad was to play card games. If you want card games, get a deck of cards.

 

[darkzelda]

I spent sometime seeing if tablets were worth it, curiously I was waiting, even before knowing its existence, something small, powerful and specially something useful. Well, I ended up buying a two-in-one device and it's been one of best investments I've made, I can use it on the couch, plug it to a monitor, take it to the office, I does all I want from a portable device.

 

[Guest17]

I've already grown weary of my iTime iWatch.

 

[Steve]

Tablets are even worse than netbooks, at least you could do some useful activities on a netbook. Tables for the most part are time wasters. Coming from someone who has multiple metbooks and tables I feel in their current form they can never replace a fully blown laptop or desktop PC.

Aside from watching YouTube videos on the crapper I don't have many other uses for a tablet, its a digital newspaper

 

[m-tec]

Each to their own.
I buy a product to serve a purpose, if it can't do it, I don't buy it. But I don't pay silly money either, no top end phone, gaming pc, £400+ tablet or 4k tv here!
I have a good desktop pc that is 6 years old, all I've done is put a USB3 card and SSD in it. I just don't need a laptop, it's a massive compromise over a desktop for me. Next computer will still be a desktop, probably custom built this time.
I used to watch videos while travelling on a Sony portable DVD player, now I use a 7 inch tablet, the screen is way better, the battery lasts 10 hours, it's much lighter and more portable (fits in a jacket pocket); plus it can do a lot of other things. I can also plug it into a monitor and use a keyboard and mouse with it if my pc died (my phone can't do that) not bad for £100!

As I said, each to their own!

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Everything has a beginning and an end. One of these days there will be no more desktop PC's, tablets or smartphones, not even gaming consoles or even Apple. It seems scary (not the Apple part, that's downright joy). I wonder what people will be doing then...

 

[DDG4005]

There was never much longevity in tablets from the start. They were, and remain, more of a novelty than anything else. Once the market became saturated with them their sales were bound to tank. It's the same with smartphones (though I think the name is a bit misleading since they're not smart enough to set themselves up); once most people have one they won't replace them for another so quickly.

 

[Guest]

I have tablet, used only for 3 days 6 month ago and not anymore,but charging up every week for condition, lol.
So useless for anything, wasted money 180$ lol.

 

[Guest]

PC has been declared dead every year since 1997.

 

[texasrattler]

Declared dead in '97? That's the start of XP, one of the, if not the most successful OS's every made. PCs were just getting started for the masses then not dying. Not to mention it's when most of us started on the internet and the only thing then was a PC. Things went south after or around the 2000 era, the whole internet boom then all the dot coms went belly up. Since then things have been good and very ugly with Millennium and Vista, both very bad OS's in all kinds of ways. Vista was just plain a PR nightmare, Windows 8 has just been as bad with PR but at least it wasn't a resource hog. Still had a lot of issues with it that most have got fixed but took so long to get those fixes, the damage was done. Now we since Windows 9 coming Spring of 2015.

 

[TheLastPanda]

You can tell the target audience was never the tech savy when they charge an extra $100 for every 16gb of additional storage for an ipad. And once everyone else found out they were just big smartphones without antennas it was a matter of time before they failed. I will admit nvidias tablet is really cool though. It's like a Gamestream htpc with native wireless controller support and pretty cheap.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

Everything has a beginning and an end. One of these days there will be no more desktop PC's, tablets or smartphones, not even gaming consoles or even Apple. It seems scary (not the Apple part, that's downright joy). I wonder what people will be doing then...

That's after the nukes take us all out in World War III isn't it? Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I am pretty sure they'll be prying a mouse and keyboard from my cold dead hands. So not having PCs in my lifetime isn't gonna happen.

 

[tipstir]

Tablets came out cheap sold at CVS, Walgreens and a few other places. So then big companies in electronics say we can make more money and started to charge outrageous pricing for the same type of tablet. So now it's 2014 and tablet sales are down and PC sales are up. But if tablets were fun to use again I am sure others would buy them at the right price.

Transparent Tablet was featured in the Robcop 2014. I would buy one if it was available but until WiFi internet is available anywhere for free run my state and local cities. Then tablets would take off. Celluar plan with tablet is way to expensive and that hurts the tablet sails.

Voice commands still up in the air! Some time it works right other times it will say "I didn't quite get that?"

 

[bobc4012]

Maybe because now everyone has almost two tablets. Also maybe because people realice they can do a lot more on a pc than with a tablet on their couch.

I speculate it ....

I agree. But you do have a few of the non-literate computer users who have run out to buy a new PC because of all the FUD that XP was going be a virus, malware, etc. catcher (and even explode according to a few fear-mongers). My adult kids who all have tablets, now have iPhones to do everything they did on the desktops, then laptops, then tablets and now smart phones. Both my son-in-laws (one in telecom and the other in IT) use their laptops when outside of their work
area (when called upon) and their smartphones for everything else. The one in IT tells me his company has no plans for Windows 8 and will move from Windows 7 to Windows 9 (assuming it brings back the desktop that their clients want - some still remain on XP and use open source and other products to maintain security as they have all along).

 

[bobc4012]

Each to their own.
I buy a product to serve a purpose, if it can't do it, I don't buy it. But I don't pay silly money either, no top end phone, gaming pc, £400+ tablet or 4k tv here!
I have a good desktop pc that is 6 years old, ...

I agree about the desktop. That is whwere I do my most serious work. My son and son-in-law both gave me a couple of "old" laptops, one of which I use when I travel. One son-in-law gave me an old Android (2.1) which is good for killing tme playing an occasional game or reading an article (the OS is too old to take advantage of the micro SD card - I can store on it but that is all). Our kids are scattered and gave us an iPad to Facetime them, which has worked much better than Skype. My wife, who would not touch my desktop nor the laptops, plays games on it all the time and exchanges e-mails with family and a couple of her lady friends. Personally, I lke the iPad over the Android as far as apps, but the Android over the iPad because the battery is replaceable and it has a "usable" USB port.

 

[whizzer]

Tablets are even worse than netbooks, at least you could do some useful activities on a netbook. Tables for the most part are time wasters. Coming from someone who has multiple metbooks and tables I feel in their current form they can never replace a fully blown laptop or desktop PC.

Aside from watching YouTube videos on the crapper I don't have many other uses for a tablet, its a digital newspaper

I agree I hate them I use a desktop sometimes a laptop

 

[GeforcerFX]

Really saying desktop PC's are dying was a joke from the beginning. The only market that was really threatened by tablets was laptops, which was slowing in sales even before the tablet boom. It suffered the same issue, the laptops became cheap and people bought them in droves and when everyone had one the market slowed down. There were very few changes in performance (for the average user) and features, basically the market set into a grove of upgrades and updates the same place desktops had been since early 2000's when they became much more affordable then boomed. Smartphones will prob hit the same wall here in 2-3 years. Business's will always need desktops, why give the employee and computer that's around 5 times easier to break and 10 times as hard to service. For people who need tons of mobility windows tablets are amazing, for people who want mobility but don't need tons of performance and features Ipads and android have been filling that gap great and will continue to do so. But people who need the most performance and bang for there buck will always stick to a desktop and that's not going to change because of tablets or smartphones, least not in the business world.