Laptop and Tablet Convergence: Is Apple Lagging Behind?

There seems to be lots of confusion in the laptop and tablet market, not helped by Apple's CEO, Tim Cook's comments, decrying laptop-tablet device convergence, "You wouldn't want to put these things together because you wind up compromising in both and not pleasing either user... I think to make the compromises of convergence, we’re not going to that party”. Interestingly, he then went on to say that other manufacturers may go down the converged device route but only from a defensive point of view.

PC technologies redrawn

So who is right? Should there indeed be two distinct platforms or will there be laptop and tablet market convergence? Having followed the PC market since I was at IBM in the early 1980s let's be certain that the Personal Computer or WinTel (Windows-Intel) platform, whether it be a desktop PC or laptop, won't be going away - it will just evolve. But, the technology landscape will have been redrawn and Microsoft and Intel won't be the dominant players... Apple, Google and ARM have already made certain of that.

The traditional laptop morphs and becomes the tablet

Here, at Technology Research, we think the PC and tablet markets will simply just become the tablet market... with a few different segments, much like the current laptop market today, i.e. with a (rapidly emerging) ultrabook segment, to add to the existing business/consumer laptop and netbook segments.

Converged performance

Why is this our main conclusion? The tablet is currently underpowered, especially in comparison to mid- or high-end laptops, but tablet processors, memory and graphics capabilities will become more powerful; so, whether a tablet is running an Intel-chip or an ARM-based chip will become academic. The chip manufacturers will just become head-on competitors: ARM moving upstream, with more powerful CPUs; and, Intel moving downstream to match ARMs power-saving/performance characteristics. You only have to look at what is already emerging... in 2011, 2% of all laptops were high performance ultrabooks with very thin form factors (almost tablet-like), versus the hybrid tablets like the Asus Transformer Prime, which is a tablet with a keyboard/dock; they're getting closer all the time.

Applications

The application software available on these devices will also merge - it won't be a case of full-blown desktop applications versus thin and light mobile apps; they will, over time, just co-exist on the same platform - with some moving into the cloud. And with more cloud services or "x" as a service (XaaS) moving to the cloud, application environments will become less important. Admittedly today the current ARM-based devices are not backwards compatible with current or legacy Windows applications; something that suits Microsoft and helps to create a business versus consumer tablet segment, where they can address both markets, but that won't remain the same for long.

2013-14 will see Microsoft hit the tablet market hard

So, the next couple of years are going to be interesting and we believe we're just about to enter a real "bun-fight" for market dominance in the tablet market. Windows 8 tablets will come into the market running on x86 chips and a Windows 8 OS that can run fully fledged Microsoft office productivity applications. And Microsoft's Windows 8 RT will also be there, running on ARM-based chips. So, we'll see the tablet platform market initially split into high-end and low-end products. Apple, as Gartner forecasts, is likely to remain dominant in the tablet market for some time to come but Microsoft, supported by a whole raft of device manufacturers, will make significant inroads into its and Android's market share. And, Apple, in particular, will be under pressure for a number of reasons, not least because they appear to be delaying the convergence of the laptop with the tablet.

Is Apple lagging behind in their Mac/iPad product roadmap?

But isn't that an interesting hypothesis... Microsoft has its Windows 8 roadmap in place - ready to roll later this year, with a consistent UI but Apple has two distinct OS environments with Mac OS X and iOS; and, no indication of a merger of its two OSs. This is more likely to hit Apple in the business environment where "power" users will want a tablet with a keyboard dock. Interesting times.

What will happen to Android tablets?

So, if Microsoft hits this market hard with Windows 8 and Apple is lagging behind in its convergence strategy, how will this affect Android? We suspect that Android will suffer too but we, as consumers, will be left with three primary OSs to choose from, sustainable due to their applications and services ecosystems, but with lower tablet price points. And, that's fine by us.

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