Who Needs a Full Computer? Tablets, Forecasts & Tablet Demand

Tablet shipments went from 16 million units in 2010 to a projected 85 million in 2012, and by 2015 a total of 248 million tablets had been delivered worldwide. That growth raised a real question for home users and businesses alike: who still needs a full computer? This article walks through the forecasts, the reasons tablets won so many buyers, how tablet and laptop storage differ, and what to do when the tablet or phone holding your photos and files stops working.

Tablets and Consumer Demand

Morgan Stanley counted 16 million tablet units shipped globally in 2010 and projected 55 million through 2011 and 85 million in 2012. Transparency Market Research put the 2011 figure at 67 million units in global sales, an increase of 276% over the 18 million units it counted in 2010. By 2015, a total of 248 million tablet units had been delivered. So who requires a full computer?

The trend did not stop there. In the 2021 worldwide PC and tablet forecast for Q2, desktop shipments were down 6% while tablet shipments were up 15%. The tablet market was still expected to grow that year, but at a much slower rate of just 3.4 percent, largely because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply. Techspot covered the numbers in detail in its PC/Tablet growth report.

eProvided specializes in micro SD card data recovery, and our lab has seen tablets and PCs with data loss every day for 27+ years. The shift from desktops to tablets changed which devices arrive on our bench, and it changed how recovery on them has to be done.

Tablets, the New Everything Machine

Tablets were destined to become consumers’ preferred way to reach the Internet. Industry numbers differ, but tablet sales showed strong growth from 2010 through 2011 and are expected to keep growing from 2021 through 2030.

The tablet was the result of Steve Jobs’ vision. Apple’s original iPad took over the market when it came out in April 2010, and the iPad 2 followed in 2011. Jobs described the tablet as the “car” of the technology landscape, compared with the desktop computer’s “truck.” His vision appears correct: international demand, primarily in Asian countries, continues to grow at a rate twice that of the United States.

Consumers find tablets more compact and portable than netbooks and laptops, and easier to use for surfing the web, checking email, social networking and watching videos. Business productivity improved when Microsoft Office packages arrived for both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android tablets, and Microsoft continues to improve the Windows platform.

Computer and Tablet Growth Since 2019

Canalys, reported via Reuters, stated that tablet growth will keep rising. The total installed volume of computers and tablets reached 1.6 billion units by the end of 2019, with expectations of 1.7 billion by the end of 2021. Covid-19 shipping issues hampered sales, and distribution channels mattered too: almost everyone noticed shortages in computers delivered on time. Once the virus disruptions clear, shipping volumes are expected to increase again.

Windows 10 and Cross-Device Productivity

With its Office Suite apps, Microsoft practically defined business productivity across platforms. The introduction of Windows 10 promised seamless transfer of Microsoft Office documents across smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers, and it gave the tablet market real potential for growth. With all the computing options available today, many people no longer need a full computer with every option built in.

How Tablets Changed Healthcare, Education and Real Estate

Tablets have already shown strong uses in health management. Doctors and nurses have access to patient records, and they can also control medication over wireless connections while measuring a patient’s physical reaction on a tablet.

Access to texts, video and documents through online storage is changing the way education is delivered. The printing industry is affected, and more trees remain standing to refresh the environment.

Realtors can show properties in videos on tablets, and the TV, movie and broadcast industries and their advertising partners now have a more flexible medium to engage viewers. The future speaks well of tablets, and tablets project well into the future.

When a Tablet Loses Data

Larger drives help with tablet storage problems, but more storage also means more to lose. When a tablet stops booting, gets wet or is dropped, what happens next depends on where the files live.

• Internal tablet storage — iPads and modern Android tablets encrypt their built-in flash with a key tied to the processor. Pulling the memory chip returns only ciphertext, so the honest path is board-level repair on the original board, or a donor-board transplant that moves the processor and memory together.
• Removable microSD card — a card that is not adopted as internal storage has no processor-bound key. Our microSD card data recovery reads the card directly, including monolithic cards that need substrate-level work.
• SD and other camera cards — cards moved between a tablet and a camera are covered by our memory card data recovery service.

Whatever the device, stop using it right away and do not install recovery apps onto it. Every new write can land on the space that still holds your deleted files. For anything outside tablets and cards, you can browse all data recovery services.

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Most of these customers reached us after a phone or tablet failed with no backup in place. If you want to know what actually holds your files inside the device, read about the NAND inside fast tablets before you decide what to do next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Recovery Services for Every Storage Device Class

If a tablet, card or drive has already failed, eProvided recovers data from every storage class: