The Rise of Tablet Computers

THE RISE OF TABLET COMPUTERS In today’s digital world, tablet computers are the leading mobile devices for daily usage. Eagerness for buying a tablet is spreading around the world. In subways, in restaurants more and more people are seen with a tablet in the hand. Some of them play games, some navigate through the Internet. Today, most people prefer to buy a tablet computer instead of a notebook or netbook. The question is why people buy tablets? They are not cheap, relative to their notebook and netbook equivalents. They cannot perform all the functions of a typical computer.Is the key of tablet computers’ success efficiency or marketing strategies and competition? I guess both of these are important factors in the success of tablet computers. The main reason why people buy tablet computers is the efficiency factor of tablets. Tablets are easy to use, they are lightweight and they consume small amount of space. They have touchscreens and they open instantly. People jus t take it out and do what they need to. Many people think that a tablet computer is the ultimate all-around mobile device. Tablets can do whatever users want.Entertainment, business and Internet features in the same device are attracting people towards tablets. It is safe to say that in near future, tablets are going to overthrow the dominant handheld gaming consoles such as Nintendo 3DS and Sony PS Vita. Tablets feature a lot of easy and addictive games and network support for them. These little games are usually free or they cost so low, such as 1 dollar. The worldwide phenomenon Angry Birds costs a dollar for the end user and the sales figures show that this game sold over 160 million on all platforms.This example shows that many people love low-cost and addictive games on tablets. Other than games, tablet computer users can be entertained by watching movies on their tablets. Today’s tablets usually offer high resolution displays, so watching movies on a tablet computer is a pleasurable experience for many users. Another important thing is the business purposes of tablets. Many business people buy a tablet for doing business on the go. These business people can check their e-mail, check business related information on the Internet or have a video conference.Users can even write, edit and read text documents on tablets. The last big feature of tablets that it brings the whole Internet to the user. Portable Internet is the biggest need of daily life in today’s world. People do everything on Internet. Watching YouTube videos, updating your status on Facebook and Twitting becomes simple when you have a tablet. Users can navigate through the Internet as they are at home. Proliferation of public wireless networks makes free Internet access possible from nearly everywhere such as cafes, malls and buses.All these things make a tablet computer the most efficient technologic device in the market. Tablets bring functionality and compactness together. Tha t’s one answer to the initial question: â€Å"How it sells a lot? † Every company can make a revolutionary product. The important thing is for this company is the ability of selling it. Today, there is a tablet market thanks to Apple. Apple is a great company with great products and they have a lot of marketing geniuses in their company. One day, Apple made a product called the Apple iPad. It really was revolutionary. It was the first modern tablet computer.Because of it was a new technology, it had missing essential features like multitasking, Adobe Flash support and a camera. Even though these lack of features, iPad became a hit. Who made it a hit? One of the most experienced marketing experts in the sector and an influential CEO, Steve Jobs was the key to the popularity of iPad. His â€Å"reality distortion field† once again proved itself. What did Apple do after the first iPad? They produced a successor, Apple iPad 2. It had a retina display and some other t hings as new features. But there was no sign of a real evolution in iPad 2 except a camera, multitasking and a couple of things.IPad 2 wasn’t real different from its predecessor. IPad 1 was released at March 28, 2010 and iPad 2 was released at March 25, 2011 but even fresh iPad 1 owners buy iPad 2. It eventually had a bigger success than iPad 1. After iPad 2-mania, Apple recently introduced The New iPad, a. k. a. iPad 3 to the market. It offered even better improvements to its predecessor, but some reviewers are still not satisfied by the improvements that have been done. For example, Apple didn’t introduce a 128 GB version, didn’t make a new design and didn’t integrate Siri which was highly anticipated by the end user.Besides just not meeting the expectancies, The New iPad actually degenerated in some way. It was heavier than its predecessor about an ounce. Knowing that it has a lot of new features that consume more power such as Retina display, better c ameras and a faster processor, it is obvious that it needs a bigger battery to keep the battery life same. An ounce is not a big difference but it is significant because it shows that Apple’s Research & Development department is not really focusing on the â€Å"Development† part especially in hardware. Apple engineers are capable of doing better.From this example, it can be understood that marketing strategies helped the tablet market to grow. Other thing which helped the market to grow was competition. Rival companies of Apple started to produce their own tablet computers instantly after witnessing the success of the first iPad. Those tablets exploited missing features of iPads such as third party software support and deeper customization. A lot of companies produced tablets similar to iPad. The main rivals of Apple are RIM, Samsung and ASUS. With all these options, the market grew exponentially and tablets became available for a wide range of users.It is importan t to deliver a new product to a lot of people. Cheaper tablets made this easier. And in total, tablet computer sales got closer to notebook and netbook sales. In conclusion, some key factors like efficiency, marketing strategy and competition helped the tablet market become what it is today. People are tending to buy a tablet in these days because of the easiness of use in daily life and such things. It is not hard to see that also marketing strategies confuse the users and make them buy tablets. In near future, more and more tablets are going to be sold and tablets will dominate the mobile device market.