Halfway through 2022, what impressed me most about the entire consumer electronics market was not the blossoming of the folding screen, but the Jedi counterattack of the tablet.
Although Apple only regularly updated the iPad Air in the spring, we saw that OPPO and Vivo have launched their own tablets, plus Huawei, Lenovo and other manufacturers that have been maintaining the update of the tablet series, and the market seems to have become lively.
According to the latest news, realme is also about to launch its first tablet. According to this rhythm, will sub-brands such as iQOO and OnePlus also participate in this "tablet war"?
Suddenly, all the players once again squeezed into this track that seems to be a "blue ocean" but is "full of killers", why is it?
Smartphones that lack growth
Whether it is iOS or Android, entering 2022, "volume" has become a collective synonym for smartphone players.
High refresh rate, under-screen front lens, image power upgrade, brand IP co-branding and other terms have become the upgrade points that the mobile phone industry cannot avoid in the past three years. The mobile phone conference of more than ten concerts a year is gone, but the model of matryoshka dolls, matryoshka dolls and nesting dolls has made users lose their expectations for changing machines.
Just recently, according to the latest data report released by market research institute IDC, in the first quarter of 2022, The Chinese smartphone market shipped about 74.2 million units, down 14.1% year-on-year.
IDC said that the impact of the on-end rebound on consumer budgets and the small upgrade of new products have led to a continuous downturn in market demand, while the more uncertain prospects for overseas markets have made many mobile phone manufacturers begin to adopt a more robust and conservative operating strategy, and the market will usher in great challenges throughout the year. Without additional positive stimulus, China's smartphone market capacity could fall below the 300 million unit mark in 2022.
In a word, everyone is reluctant to change their mobile phones.
As a device that may be between a mobile phone and a computer, a tablet with a large screen, a support for a stylus, children can take online lessons, and a wife can chase dramas has once again received the attention of many manufacturers after the outbreak of the epidemic.
You know, as an extremely cash-burning hardware industry, only Apple and Samsung have maintained a fast pace of updates for their tablets before. Google, Huawei, and Lenovo have all dabbled in tablet computers in the early days, but some have quit halfway, and some have chosen to kill back halfway.
Everyone knows that the tablet business is not easy to do, but the problem today is that the mobile phone track is not easy.
Combined with the IDC data mentioned above, you will find a coincidence that the top five Smartphone sales in China in the first quarter of 2021 have joined the tablet battle.
Ecology or business?
Children do multiple choice questions, adults all have to. For the category of tablet computers, it does not matter who comes first in ecology and business, the key is that none of them can be left behind.
As the earliest pioneers in China, Huawei and Lenovo are among the manufacturers involved in tablets with higher product popularity. With the help of Hongmeng OS, the former has revitalized a variety of its tablet product lines. The latter moved the Savior series and made the stacking of tablets almost to the extreme. The biggest advantage of the two is that it is different from the iPad, and the construction of the basic ecology is completed with the help of localization.
As of now, Android tablets still have the stubborn disease of difficult and slow software adaptation, but the good news is that as two giant companies with Hongmeng Interconnection and ready to focus on creating a tablet game experience, it is more comfortable to join the category of tablets under the long-established main ecosystem.
From the data point of view, Huawei chooses to blossom at multiple points, and has a MatePad, MatePad Pro, MatePad SE, MatePad Paper, MateBook E, M5, M6 and other tablet series or single products. In less than three months of its release, Lenovo's savior Y700, which operates its flagship store in JD.com, has received more than 20,000 reviews.
Business is done, but ecology still has to wait.
Who can it replace?
Google's first tablet product was launched in 2011, when it gained a short-term popularity, and the Nexus tablet series continued until 2014, when it was subsequently replaced by the Pixel series. Still, the Pixel series of tablets clearly wobbled between the iPad and the Surface, and finally set to go the way ChromeBook was headed in 2018. The following year, Google announced the end of its tablet product line.
That is to say, as the spokesperson for the OS, Google said: "Brothers eat well and drink well, I withdraw first." ”
Fast forward to 2019, which is the year of tablets. Even Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, has said that Huawei's tablet product line almost disappeared this year.
Ecology is the lifeblood of Android tablets, Google just launched the tablet is very popular, many Apps did adaptation, but at that time to promote the growth of Android tablets is mainly the consumer content consumption demand, the vast majority of adapted Apps are video content.
After two years of silence, the Android tablet "dragon looks up".
In 2021, the glory after independence also quickly released the glory tablet V7, the OPPO Pad was officially launched in 2022, the Samsung Table S8 series was sold, vivo launched its first Pad "participation" in April, and Google also pushed the Android 12L tablet exclusive system. Coupled with Huawei's MatePad series and even Apple's iPad series, each new product has invariably begun to emphasize the concept of "productivity".
But the reality is incredibly harsh.
The tablet between the mobile phone light office and the professional tool computer, or did not find a more accurate positioning.
In fact, as a heavy user of the iPad Pro and iPad mini, when using these two products, the latter is almost completely occupied by e-books and streaming, the former set of more than 10,000 yuan of the price is indeed related to "productivity", but nothing more than using Notability to take notes, using MindNode as a mind map for video scripts, and using Notion to complete my personal planning synchronization.
That is to say, for me, the iPad Pro, as the most powerful tablet on the market at present, its help to me in "productivity" is limited to personal growth, knowledge aggregation, etc., and has nothing to do with "production".
What makes me happy is that whether it is Apple or Huawei, relying on its multiple product lines, the tablet can achieve linkage with other devices. But to put it bluntly, these devices with larger screens on the table are mostly likely to be a music controller, time display, or preview the presence of a PDF file.
At present, it cannot replace any device, but it is easily replaced by large-screen mobile phones and thin and light notebooks.
Will we really need it in the future?
To be honest, I'm bullish on where tablets are headed in the future.
It must be a diversified device that gives priority to a separate system and assists the hardware.
First of all, it can cooperate with a mobile phone to complete the office project of some industries all day or even all week, without the need for a PC or Mac. Secondly, the size of the tablet may become larger in the future, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro may replace the 11-inch iPad Pro in the future as a "small size" iPad Pro, and the 15-inch iPad Pro will become the largest tablet device in history. The third is that developers can get no profit from Pad OS in the past, so that the software ecology can remain alive.
I know that this route may take three or five years or even longer, after a variety of expensive devices will even continue to appear players "jump in the middle of the car", but the continuation of history is that one category overturns another category, and tablets are the only devices that can subvert mobile phones + computers.
Although I am optimistic about the prospects of tablets, the data is still declining.
Just recently, according to the data research agency Canalys released the first quarter of 2022 global tablet shipment data, tablet shipments fell by 3% compared with the same period last year, a total of 38.6 million units, the top five are Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo and Huawei.
Despite the decline, tablets are still gaining momentum compared to before the outbreak.
The question of who will be the center of the next decade is hard to answer, but with so many brands beginning to dabble in tablets today, the new track campaign can at least be launched.