Google Android Tablets CTO wants builders to reimagine tablets for new use cases, allowing a fresh experience on a device that is not fixed to a keyboard and enables for better mobility.
Lenovo Yoga Smart Tab (Image: Lenovo)
Tablets are the future of mobile computing and will soon exceed the popularity of laptops. This is a proclamation made lately by a noted industry veteran Rich Miner Google’s CTO of Android tablets and one who was responsible for coming up with Android in 2007. Miner believes that once tablets reach the crossover point, laptops will never again be able to beat tablet sales across the globe.
Miner made the comments during The Android Show earlier this week. “I actually think that there’s going to be a crossover point at some point in the not too distant future where there are more tablets sold annually than there are laptops,” he said. “I think once you cross over that point, you’re not going to be coming back.”
Miner also shared his taught on why this position switch may take place. He stated that tablets are “less expensive than a laptop” but quite capable of a lot of tasks. He detailed during the show that tablets have been gaining use in things other than media consumption. As the devices have started becoming more and more strong for creativity and productivity use-cases, people have started to prefer tablets over laptops.
As noted by 9to5Google, Miner also mentioned that the crossover has already started taking place. In 2020, for instance, tablet sales almost equalled the global shipments of laptops. While he agrees that the pandemic was a big “accelerant” for this growth, he forecast that this sale increase will continue for the time to come.
The Android co-founder mentioned that this administration of tablets is gaining steam a long time after their existence came into being. Google has also noted high keyboard attach rates along with the rise in the use of tablets, meaning people have started using tablets as their go-to device on the move, for functionality that extends beyond the capacities of a touch screen device.
Miner also revealed how Google is working to increase the tablet experience in the time to come. A vital boost will be through “tablet-first” apps that will visualize functionality based on the extra screen space that tablets provide. The apps will also focus on reevaluating the use-case with devices that are not fixed to a keyboard, and are much easier for carrying around than laptops. Miner hints that we will see “wildly new use cases” with this approach.