The era of the 10-inch tablets has come and gone, the future computing landscape will be dominated by smaller, more portable tablets and convertible Ultrabook type devices, according to Intel exec Kirk Skaugen.
Skaugen, Intel’s vice president of PC Client Group, was speaking at the recent Intel Solutions Summit 2013 in Los Angeles, when he made these comments, according to a ZDNet report today. He suggested the drop off in interest in the “full-sized” slates would not be gentle or gradual but the market share of such devices would “rapidly erode” this year.
Attacked from two sides
The popularity of smaller tablets in the 7 to 8-inch diagonal screen size range was one of the first developments to put the brakes on full sized tablet market growth. Where a smaller version of a tablet is available buyers have voted with their feet (wallets). The trend has been that these smaller tablets are dominating, where both sizes have concurrently been available. In the case of the Apple iPad, the 8-inch iPad mini has pulled ahead, even though the full size one had such a commanding lead. The smaller sized, lighter tablets are more “handy” for carrying around, being held with one hand while operated with the other and crucially also significantly cheaper.
Poised to squeeze the 10-inch tablet market from the other direction are a slew of hybrid laptops with detachable displays or other tablet conversion facilities according to Skaugen. All Haswell Ultrabooks will be required to have touchscreen functionality. Skaugen predicted that many smaller 11-inch region variants would have detachable screens while 13-inch or larger varieties would prefer “flip” designs. Also with these new designs reaching the market later this year Windows 8 will perhaps start to be taken more seriously, the Modern UI side of things will become much more useful to many new PC owners.
The new Haswell Ultrabook standard doesn’t just specify touchscreen inclusion. Skaugen says that many will feature facial recognition, voice recognition technology, faster SSDs, higher resolution displays and slimmer yet even more durable chassis. “You're going to see a ton of innovation here” he surmised.
Also we mustn’t forget the gear AMD has coming out in 2013; Richland APU powered laptops and convertibles should arrive before summer and Kaveri later in the year, with hardware and software experiences to rival Intel’s Ultrabook convertibles.
