Have we reached peak tablet?

It looks like our iPad love affair is coming to an end. Global sales of the tablet device have fallen to their lowest point since 2011, according to Apple, whose earnings were announced last week.

And it’s not just the iPad. Demand for tablet computers around the world is slowing down. This chart (compiled by Statista and based on research by IDC) shows how much global shipments have fallen since 2014 – some 9% since the same time last year.

So why is it happening? The short answer: smartphones. Owned by 68% of Americans (compared with the 45% who own tablets) smartphones are becoming larger and more multifunctional, crowding the tablet out of its place in the market. Because phones are subsidized by carriers, they come with the ever-present promise of an upgrade, and this drives demand. Meanwhile, people hold on to their tablets for longer and this contributes to the market becoming saturated sooner.

Comparatively speaking, tablets aren’t doing too badly: despite the recent fall in sales, ownership of the device has risen 45% since 2011. Other products, however, have not fared so well. This chart shows how ownership of a selection of devices has evolved over the past decade.

In 2014, one in three people owned an e-book; that number has shrunk to one in five today. In 2010, 88% of adults under 30 owned a laptop or desktop computer; today it’s 78%. MP3 players are also disappearing from the lives of young adults, with a drop in ownership rates among those aged 18-29 of 24% since 2010.

According to the Pew authors: “As smartphones came to prominence several years ago, younger owners perhaps did not feel as much of a need as their older peers to have other kinds of devices.”

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Author: Anna Bruce-Lockhart is an editor at the World Economic Forum

Image: A broken tablet, September 16, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino