Who needs tablet pc?

The tablet was released with lots of fanfare when the iPad first went on sale and millions of people went out and bought one. This has caught a lot of people by surprise given that it was never really clear what you would use one for. Nevertheless many other tablets have come on to the market in recent years although they have not sold nearly as well as the iPad. It does raise the question of does anybody really need a tablet?

One of the odd things about tablets is just how well they have sold given that there is really nobody who needs them. There was really no demand for them when Apple released the iPad. After all most things that would use a tablet for can also be used done on a smart phone or a laptop just as well if not better. There are a few applications for which they have turned out to be useful. Airline pilots for example have been able to replace a lot of the paperwork that had to carry by using a tablet. But beyond a few specialized uses there are few people who really need a tablet.

Although nobody has any real need for a tablet people are still buying them and they are finding uses for them. It is one of those technologies that nobody really needed but now that they have it they are finding ways to use it. The most obvious example of this is for reading ebooks. For several reasons ebooks really haven't been very popular, one of the biggest reasons was that they were awkward to read on a computer because you pretty much had to be sitting at a desk to do it. With a tablet however people can lay on the couch and read just like they would with a regular book. As a result a lot more people are reading ebooks.

There are a lot of other similar things that people are finding that they can do with their tablet. Studies show that the most common uses are reading, email and playing games which should probably come as no surprise. Again these are all things that don't really require a tablet but which people are choosing to do with them now that they have one.

Over time there is a pretty good chance that people will come to need the tablet. Right now they are finding uses for it as they uses become better defined people will start to rely on tablets to do them. When that happens we will start to see the tablet become a lot more mainstream than it is right now. While the tablet has sold well it is still selling nowhere near as well as laptops are. Most people still find that laptops are more useful than a tablet and it will take quite a while for this to happen but eventually it will.