Lenovo has stopped selling Windows tablets with screen sizes under 10 inches in the U.S. due to lack of interest.
Lenovo has stopped selling two small-screen Windows tablets with 8-inch screens: the ThinkPad 8, which was announced in January and a model of Miix 2, which started shipping in October last year.
This is not a quip, but an honest question: is the size qualifier here really necessary? I.e., do Windows tablets sell in any meaningful number at all, regardless of size? Windows laptops and desktops surely still sell well, but Windows tablets?
Like smartphones, I’m pretty sure this market is dominated by iOS and Android, and Lenovo throwing the towel in the ring here doesn’t bode well for any possible third ecosystems – and that sucks.
I don’t know about world-wide sales. I can say I like my Surface 2 Pro quite a lot. I’ve also got an Asus Transformer Android tablet.
I am not sure that I see the point of selling real tablet tablets. The “convertibles” which switch between tablet and notebook are better. I count the Surface as one of those because the Type cover does a really good job.
And as for the smaller tablet sizes, I’d rather have a phablet. My current phone the Note 2 probably counts. Its screen is quite big enough for reading ebooks and whatever else a small tablet is used for.
I dunno… I have absolutely no desire for a tablet/laptop combo, as I don’t need anything but consumption
devices outside of my house. As for being the best of both worlds, the Surface Pro 3 is 1.7 pounds, which is WAY too heavy to use as a tablet, IMO. That’s even heavier than the 1st gen iPad, which always felt like a brick to me.
That being said, I’m not a huge fan of either iOS or Android, so I’m kind of rooting for Microsoft here. If they can get their act together and let devs use the same code base to develop apps for phones, tablets, desktop/RT apps (inside a window, not full screen), and Xbox One, that is interesting to me, esp if it allows the app ecosystem to take off.
Edited 2014-07-19 02:35 UTC
Its called Universal apps. It should start to make the industry a little more interesting.
#if WINDOWS_APP
if (!rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(HubPage)))
#endif
#if WINDOWS_PHONE_APP
if (!rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(WindowsPhoneStartPage)))
#endif
from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn609832.aspx
Interesting, Universal App’s can use ifdef’s now, thats so innovative!
Edited 2014-07-20 19:01 UTC
While your comment was totally sarcastic, innovation in this case is whats not important. People wanted apps that they can run on their desktops and mobile devices. Now Microsoft is giving it to them, while not innovative they dont have to be. Its customer demand and that is what they are giving customers. Do I see this increasing marketshare for Microsoft in the mobile space? It depends on the apps.
I totally agree with you. I just bought my wife a dell venue pro 11, technically a tablet, but used as a laptop with touchscreen. It is too heavy and too large to have a similar use case to a phablet.
I love my iPad mini, but I will replace it with the iPhone 6, 5.5 inch, should that product come out. The phablet can be carried everywhere, but is also large enough to replace a tablet….perfect device for me.
as for productivity…I have a 39 inch 4k monitor attached to my productivity desktop and many of my colleagues have dual monitor setups…. no laptop or tablet can be truly great at productivity.
Edited 2014-07-21 07:56 UTC
We will continue to bring new Windows devices to market across different screen sizes, including a new 8-inch tablet and 10-inch tablet coming this holiday. Our model mix changes as per customer demand, and although we are no longer selling ThinkPad 8 in the U.S., and we have sold out of Miix 8-inch, we are not getting out of the small-screen Windows tablet business as was reported by the media. In short, we will continue to sell both 8 and 10 inch Windows tablets in both the U.S. and non-U.S markets.
http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1803
Edited 2014-07-19 02:12 UTC
Backpedaling, or overzealous media?
Overzealous media, especially media that tends to be biased against Windows. Alot of Linux forums today were whooping and cheering until I posted the link. Now its, “Microsoft EXTORTED them!!!!”
Poor QC for the ThinkPad 8. Poorly designed audio subsystem, secure boot problems, and a micro USB connector design flaw resulted in too many returns. Lenovo is going to offload the rest of the original product to an unsuspecting European market, and hope that by the next iteration (Christmas time), they can fix the problems.
So SIZE is what is important in MS world.
Same as LEGACY APPS, where important, even though legacy apps designed for Win32 are walking nightmare on mobile (too small screen and no screen-flexibility in Win32 !!!).
So LEGACY APPS or lack thereof harmed WinRT (which was compared to Win, instead of iOS/Android which where its direct competitors).
I think its that “everything that MS say is THE TRUTH AND HOLY” attitude of western hemisphere…
WinP will win. Win will win due to LEGACY APPS, Win tablets with SIZE do not compete well.
MS have good PR department, and lots of talk about MS products focus on MS PR provided lines.
That’s was good for IBM PC’s and to some extend servers. For mobile MS have yet to find good story. As most of their messages are either counter productive (LEGACY APPS) or wired (SIZE).
You should probably check that your CAPS LOCK is functioning properly.
Do tablets with less than eight inches screens sell, despite of the operative system they are equipped with?
I thought that niche was eaten by the big screened smartphones…
Not when the tablet costs half what the phone does at the unsubsidized price.
This is entirely anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt…
At my school, Windows Surface tablets outnumber Android tablets by a huge margin. I’ve seen at least a dozen Surface tablets, but only one Android one. These are all far outnumbered by iPads.
In my limited experience with a Surface tablet, it seems to be geared more towards productivity and less towards media consumption, whereas Android is the opposite. That’s not to say one can’t be productive on Android; indeed, I found the Asus Transformer Android tablets to be great at productivity. But from what I’ve seen the Surface is better.
As for the iPad, it hits a good balance between consumption and productivity. It’s also a status symbol, especially among young people.
I hated Windows 8 on the desktop but Windows 8 on my Dell Venue 8 Pro is excellent. The touch interface works really well and the size is right.
My impression of these tablets is that they were badly underpowered. They run Windows, not Windows RT, and came with 2 gigabytes of memory and Intel Atom processors. The high DPI screen on Windows 8 stinks on ice, too, because Windows 8 screen scaling stinks on ice.
We bought some ThinkPad Tablet 2’s that have worked out quite nicely.
Windows tablets are actually pretty useful. Small-screen tablets of any sort are useless for real work. They are something you buy your kids so they’ll shut up about wanting a tablet.
Windows RT is a locked-down joke but the TPT2 has actually been a good laptop replacement for our district supervisors running around to retail stores.
Where the Windows tablets are a decisive win is the fact that have both a capacitive touchscreen *AND* a Wacom digitizer layer.
A pen actually means far more real software can be used…. people wrote on clay tablets…. they didn’t fingerpaint on them. A precision pointing device is important. This is why I want a real Mac tablet instead of an iPad.
A tablet PC without a precision pointing device is nothing more than a consumer gaming and facebook toy.