You’re absolutely right. This leads into the four markets that I think the tablet can sell to:
1. For kids or secondary throw-around devices (like for travel).
2. Digital Art and pen-based content creation.
3. People who won’t otherwise use their phone (in my view, not many).
4. Point of sale, retail, mobile enterprise computing.
The key here is understanding that it’s not like everyone threw out their personal computers when the tablet and phone was invented. They just aren’t replaced as often as phones.
That’s where I don’t think tablets compete well against someone’s existing laptop. If Apple let the iPad run full macOS software without the App Store that still wouldn’t convince me to buy one, even if that would be a welcome change.
So, I guess that’s my overall point here: tablets have to compete with proper computers and I don’t think they’ve succeeded. The Surface Pro turns into a proper computer and it’s telling that most people use it as a laptop, not a keyboard-less tablet.
