But for a lot of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate.
That's a bit of a red herring. One of my colleagues uses a Surface; the first thing she does on arriving at the office is plug two cables to work with a proper screen and keyboard. Then when she has a meeting, she simply unplugs and uses it as a tablet, which is useful for passing it around, etc.
People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers. As a developer this kind of customer is in many ways a better customer to serve than a teen snapping selfies on a phone.
But in between those sits 90% of the market, which is everyone who works all day with not-that-complex Office documents (certainly stuff that can be handled by a quadcore, 2GB machine) and web apps which offload most work to the servers (third-party or internal).
I may be biased because we provide solutions on top of a web-based, Free Software platform (https://www.odoo.com/), but I believe most of our clients' workers could replace their laptops with tablets + stand without any loss of functionality.
It's worth keeping in mind that there's a countervailing trend though. Conventional laptops are getting lighter and last a lot longer on a charge. The extra bulk of something like a current Macbook Air vs an iPad isn't much but it's a vastly more capable machine.
And, even if we do see an increase in more hybrid devices like the Surface, you can't just blow up a touch screen app to 24". Specialized tasks will still require specialized software.
That's a bit of a red herring. One of my colleagues uses a Surface; the first thing she does on arriving at the office is plug two cables to work with a proper screen and keyboard. Then when she has a meeting, she simply unplugs and uses it as a tablet, which is useful for passing it around, etc.
People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers. As a developer this kind of customer is in many ways a better customer to serve than a teen snapping selfies on a phone.
But in between those sits 90% of the market, which is everyone who works all day with not-that-complex Office documents (certainly stuff that can be handled by a quadcore, 2GB machine) and web apps which offload most work to the servers (third-party or internal).
I may be biased because we provide solutions on top of a web-based, Free Software platform (https://www.odoo.com/), but I believe most of our clients' workers could replace their laptops with tablets + stand without any loss of functionality.