Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

To: SonnyListon who wrote (5133)	3/2/2012 9:36:54 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10029

Its not that the laptop is a bit bigger and more burdensome to carry than a tablet, its how you hold it when you use it. A tablet and smartphone are both used the same way: held flat in one hand, while the other hand does the touch UI. So tablet and smartphone use are seamless, its just that one is bigger than the other, which provides you with a larger screen and also makes it more awkward to use as either a phone or a camera. A laptop makes for an awkward tablet, because you hold it under the keyboard, and reach across the keyboard to use the screen as a touch UI. So Ultrabooks will not displace smartphone/tablet use. They are too different for that. Their only appeal will be for use as a legacy computing device, not a new paradigm computing device. Of course there is a large market for that, but its not the hot growing market. Its a stagnate one headed for decline. But more to the point, something on the order of 100M tablets have now sold, so your list is a little out of date in the present, much less the next decade.

To: SonnyListon who wrote (5133)	3/2/2012 10:06:07 PM
From: greg s	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10029

Here's one anecdotal case (mine): My main computing platform is a 7 year old Dell Latitude (plan to replace with a higher performance Ultrabook late 2012/2013). I also have a Blackberry Curve, Asus Eee netbook and an iPad 2 Wi-Fi+3G). Oh yeah and a Kindle (monochrome) for reading. When I take road trips in the motorhome I take the Blackberry, the netbook, the Kindle and the iPad 2. The Blackberry keeps me connected to phone & email all the time and can use it in a pinch to get addresses, phone numbers, etc. The netbook serves as a real computer (with USB ports and a keyboard). The iPad is a motoring device. Since I can connect via 3G, I can run campground, sewer dumps, weather, real time radar apps on the fly from the passenger seat. Oh yeah, I also have a Garmin GPS on the dash. Will I ever replace the Blackberry with an iPhone or Android with a touch screen. Not sure. I know for now, I don't want to lose the physical keyboard Don't know about market trends, but that's my story.