My old dell tablet got dropped and the screen cracked. I went up to microsoftstore.com to look at what they might have and………nothing. Just Surface. Ditto for BestBuy. Amazon has some NuVision tablets that might work.
I understand the tablet market is depressed but holy cow. This appears to me to be a complete market collapse for Windows 10 on tablets as a consumption device.
It’s crazy. I have an iPad, a remaining Windows tablet, and an Android tablet. I MUCH prefer the Windows tablet. Windows 10 finally got the tablet experience right. Finally. Just in time for Microsoft to apparently give up on it just like phone?
EDIT UPDATE: I wrote the headline and realize now my intent was not specific. I was referring to the WINDOWS tablet market. Obviously, the Android and iOS tablet markets are not dead.
seapea
<blockquote><a href="#227336"><em>In reply to 2ilent8cho:</em></a></blockquote><p>to me it seems the 2-in-1 market overwhelmed the tablet only market in sales and functionality.</p><p>I don't see much tablets in use anywhere , and most of the time i see one on trips etc it is a form of Kindle.</p><p><br></p>
Locust Infested Orchard Inc.
<p>The apparent reason for the decline of Windows tablets was their abysmal battery life, which could in no way match the battery life of both Android tablets and iPads. Though manufacturers often listed Windows tablets as having up to 7 hours of continual usage, real life usage was almost always half of that stated by the manufacturers. This disenfranchised the consumer to purchase >$350 high-end Windows tablets, leaving the market for bargain-basement poorly equipped Windows 2GB tablets, with sub-720p resolution displays, thereby often leaving a sour taste due to a lack-lustre user-experience of Windows on tablets.</p><p><br></p><p>I have a Lenovo ThinkPad 8 (a 8.3" 16:10 1080p Dragontrail IPS display with 4GB RAM and 64 MB eMMC storage space) which is accompanied with 802.11a/b/g/n, GPS and LTE, an absolutely superb Windows 10 Pro x64 device and still going strong since purchasing it back in November 2014, with the exception of the appalling 4½ hour usage time with a full charge.</p><p><br></p><p>The problem with Windows tablets has not been with Microsoft, but squarely at Intel being either lazy, or incompetent, but most probably Intel's dismissal of the mobile market in the mid-noughties (2000s) as being inconsequential. Intel made a calculated decision, and evidently it has cost them dearly, as 95% of all mobiles and tablets are powered by ARM SoCs.</p><p><br></p><p>Intel's best efforts were with the Atom range of CPUs that powered Windows tablets (such as your Dell tablet ― probably a Venue 8 or 11), at a thermal design power (TDP) of 4W. In comparison, ARM SoC have a TDP of about 1W. Therein lies the reason for Windows tablets poor battery life. Intel has since pulled the plug on Atom CPU developments, however with increasing competition from the likes of Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 845 with the accompanying Windows on ARM OS, AMD's offerings with the powerful 15W Ryzen APUs embedded with Radeon Vega Graphics and Qualcomm's Gigabit LTE chip, Intel has announced within the last few days, a rebuttal to both Qualcomm and AMD, with its quad core Gemini Lake 4.8W SoCs (though still power hungry).</p><p><br></p><p>Intel has dragged its feet for far too long concerning all things mobile, akin to what Microsoft has done over the same time frame. The fortunes of Microsoft are intertwined with Intel, with Windows running exclusively on x86 devices. However Microsoft has succumbed to the failure of the Wintel monopoly to take on traction with low-power devices, and now some hope lies with the fruits of Microsoft's wisdom, though late it may be, as both Microsoft and Qualcomm have embarked on a collaborative relationship to build devices with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 SoC (835 initially) running Windows on ARM OS, a full blown Window 10 desktop OS for ARM devices that have allegedly the battery power to last a full day, in the months ahead.</p><p><br></p><p>The tablet market in 2018 is set for another shake up, by virtue of a slew of new ARM powered tablets running Windows on ARM. Let's just hope the prices for these devices are affordable for the average consumer.</p><p><br></p><p>The talk of new ARM powered tablets running Windows cannot be complete without discussion of the Windows 10 ARM OS powering ARM smartphones. It's a waiting game we'll just have to sit it out, hoping 2018 is the year for a new dawn for Windows 10, equipped specifically to render proportionately on low-powered sub-10" devices.</p>
Locust Infested Orchard Inc.
<blockquote><a href="#227444"><em>In reply to Chris_Kez:</em></a></blockquote><p>I appreciate your kind words. </p><p><br></p><p>If my memory serves me well, the 4 GB RAM and 128 GB eMMC storage configuration options became available about 12 months after the debut of the ThinkPad 8, along with an updated faster Intel Broadwell Atom CPU. However it was at about this time, Lenovo realised they had mounting ThinkPad inventory in the US due to atrocious sales, thus Lenovo ended US sales shortly after.</p><p><br></p><p>Sales in the EU were slightly better, and so I believe the 4 GB and 128 GB offerings were only available in Europe in the first instance, and later in the Middle East and South-East Asia (don't know about sales in the Far East, Latin America, or Africa).</p><p><br></p><p>I followed, almost religiously, the state of Windows Tablet market, attempting to comprehend why the likes of the Dell Venue Pro 8, as well the HP Stream 7", HP Slate 2, HP ProPad 408 G1, etc, were not attracting mass volume sales as both the iFad and Android tablets were achieving.</p><p><br></p><p>The iFads were priced similar to those high-end Windows tablets, but the emblazoned half-bitten Apple logo on the rear of any device in minds of the consumer, implies a product that is deserved of a high price tag. The Windows tablets simply couldn't compete with poor battery life. That's where the second sequel to the Windows tablet story continues in 2018, with Snapdragon 845 tablets with Windows on ARM. But the price has to right, else it doom and gloom for Microsoft, yet again.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#227361"><em>In reply to Locust Infested Orchard Inc.:</em></a></blockquote><p>I don't think a version of Windows that has to use emulation to run standard Windows programs really qualifies as a "full blown Windows 10 desktop OS". That would make Intel-based Windows running under VMWare even more "full blown" than Windows on ARM.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#227596"><em>In reply to Simard57:</em></a></blockquote><p>Why would you think that emulation will be transparent? Performance is a factor. Otherwise why pay for the latest Core i7 processor when you could buy a cheaper Celeron?</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#227964"><em>In reply to Simard57:</em></a></blockquote><p>"I can't imagine wanting my programs to run faster" said no one (unless they're in a self-congratulations state of mind on their purchase). Sometimes there's a lower limit on performance that allows a program to be usable. If the performance of such a program when emulated is below the performance of a low-end conventional PC, it may fail one aspect of "transparency".</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
Locust Infested Orchard Inc.
<blockquote><a href="#227447"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p>My description of "full blown Windows 10 desktop OS" is to make an explicitly clear distinction between the three former OS of Windows RT, Windows Phone 7/8, and Windows 10 Mobile, which were entirely distinct OS from their desktop OS counterpart.</p><p><br></p><p>Window 10 Pro x64 and Windows on ARM shall be fundamentally the same, built upon what Microsoft describes as Windows Core OS, which has the aim to align the kernel and the fundamental Windows libraries completely independent of the architecture (x86 or ARM), in contrast to the current situation where each Windows version has a different interface and libraries.</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft has also worked on the dilemma with standardising how the UI scales across all devices, described as a unified adaptive shell to span all Windows 10 hardware types, known as Composable Shell (CShell). This should resolve the issue around the UI elements of x86 applications scaling proportionately on both tablets and smartphones.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#227711"><em>In reply to Locust Infested Orchard Inc.:</em></a></blockquote><p>Windows RT and Windows phone 7/8 weren't entirely distinct from Windows 8 on the desktop. The goal of merging these OS's into a single OS was started long before UWP or Windows Core OS was announced. Of course if you take MS at it's "One Windows" word, Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 on the desktop are the same OS (not that I believe that, but that's the company line).</p><p><br></p><p>As far as processor independent architecure is concerned, it started with Windows NT.</p>
skane2600
<p>I think tablets are in a odd space. Not sufficiently "handy" to compete with smartphones, but still the wrong ergonomics for a PC replacement.</p>
Locust Infested Orchard Inc.
<blockquote><a href="#227622"><em>In reply to wun derbar: </em><strong><em>"The reality really is that the only tablet that's actually worth buying right now is an iPad."</em></strong></a></blockquote><p>Oh please, please, please tell me more, I really want to buy this <strong>iFad</strong>.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#227982"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>The people who have to use the device probably had no voice in its selection. It's a centralized IT kind of thing.</p>
Bats
<p>Is the tablet market dead? The answer, NO.</p><p>Like I've mentioned many times before, technology finds a way of converging two things and making them into one. That convergence is laptops and tablets.</p><p>I saw this happening 4-5 years ago, when I was at the local Best Buy to play with cool tech and I noticed how bluetooth keyboards for iPads and Androids were sold out. The very fact that people were buying them, suggested to me that there is a market for mobile computing bigger than the smartphone. Then, I see Microsoft and Samsung come up with their 2-in-1's at the same time, the Surface pro and the Galaxy Note Pro.</p><p>The point of all this, is to say that the tablet is not dead. It's alive and kicking in the 2-in-1 form factor. The same can be said for laptop computers.</p>