[aetherson]

With regards to smartphones: this just isn't true. The compelling app on the iPhone was not third-party apps (they didn't even exist at launch!), it was browser + messaging + camera + maps. That was clear form day one, and while you're right that some people argued for a physical keyboard and they have been proven wrong by history, the fundamental value prop of the iPhone was absolutely not a blank-slate platform that people kind of figured out what to do with. The value prop was "we know that you want to get emails on the go, look up simple things on the web, have a more convenient UI to your text messages, have a camera on hand, and be able to navigate."

Apps came later, as a differentiating point against other smartphones, not as the value prop of the smartphone as a platform.

Tablets: I think that the doubters have been proven right by history. Sales are way, way down on tablets -- largely because they just aren't that useful.

[minthd]

Even if growth of tablets is slowing, they're still very popular , with 1 billion tablets users worldwide in 2015, and 1.4 billion users predicted in 2018.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Tablet-Users-Surpass-1-Bill...

That's hardly a sign of non-usefulness.

[aetherson]

I want to stick up for the difference between "not that useful" and "not useful." I have a tablet (a cheap Android one). I use it to read, and to check email and browse the web while in bed. I like it. It's to some extent useful.

But of my computing devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop), it's the least essential of my devices, and the one I've paid the least for. It has the narrowest use case. If I had to replace my tablet usage with smartphone usage, well, I wouldn't be perfectly happy, but I'd live.

That is, I think, the story of tablets. Apple convinced a lot of people to try tablets. And, you know, it's not like tablets go out and kill your dog. They're fine. If you've got one, you'll use it every once in a while. They also don't spontaneously combust after one year, so it's hardly a surprise that the total number of "people who own a tablet" is increasing.

But sales are falling because they aren't that useful. They aren't massively more portable than laptops, they aren't massively more useful than smartphones. There is no single thing that they do really, really well that's highly useful to a large share of the population.

I think this is a really illustrative example for what's going to happen with the Apple Watch and the smart watch in general. Apple has a deservedly strong brand, they will get a lot of people to buy the Apple Watch at first. And, you know, having a watch, people will say, "Sure, I use it." But instead of picking up momentum onstoppably, as smartphones did, they'll sort of... languish. There's undeniably a use case for smartwatches, just as there's undeniably a use case for tablets.

It's just not that useful.

[duaneb]

> There is no single thing that they do really, really well that's highly useful to a large share of the population.

Reading anything of length will blow on a phone or laptop.

[aetherson]

Reading at length is, you know, fine on a phone or laptop. Tablets (small tablets, at least -- I don't think that 10"ers are good for this) are superior. But I've read on both my phone and my laptop/desktop, and both basically work okay.

Perhaps more importantly, I don't think that 80%+ of the population reads in long-form commonly enough to make this a big deal. You can deal with a slightly inconvenient long-form reading experience if you only read long-form four times a year, say.

Finally: e-ink dedicated readers deliver a superior value for a big chunk of the long-form reading out there (not all of it), thus further-narrowing this use-case.

[mercer]

Perhaps we're in agreement and I'm misreading your comments, but it seems to me that tablets are clearly useful enough to be considered 'successful'. They're just not the kind of thing everybody wants or needs. And I'm not sure tablet makers ever really thought that.

Using the term 'languish' just seems a bit too negative to describe this particular outcome. Tablets are finding (or found) their market, and are doing okay. Smartwatches will probably be a similar kind of thing. Setting the bar for 'success' at smartphone levels seems a bit too high to me.