When the first iPad was released by Steve Jobs in 2010, the whole world went crazy, including myself. Nobody had seen a device that was both better than a phone and a laptop at doing many daily activities such as internet browsing, listening to music, email and watching videos. It was a game changer.

However, seven years have past and it appears that the tablet market, in the previous few years, has stopped growing. With this, it has actually started to slow down and decline in size. This was a bit of a shock for a gadget that many people own and use on a daily occurance. So why is the tablet market slowly but surely dying? Here are three reasons:

#1 People Don’t Upgrade Tablets Often

The great thing about smartphones is that people love to stay up to date with the latest technology and will commonly upgrade and change their smartphone once a year. This means, for tech OEMs producing smartphones, they can rely on the fact people change their phones so often to make money from them.

Tablets were considered to adopt a similar approach by consumers, where they would upgrade their tablet once a year. For that matter, I had purchased the first three iPads each year as they came out. However, upon purchasing the third generation iPad, I stopped. Why? Because the generation after that, I felt, did not warrant the cost of upgrading (where it was merely internal improvements to processor and graphics etc.).

This is the problem with the tablet market. People do not upgrade tablets that often because they do not see the need to. Why would someone upgrade a tablet to reduce the weight of it by 5%? For a smartphone, maybe since you are holding it a lot of the time in the day and have it in your pocket. For a tablet rested on your lap infront of the TV, this is not so much a problem.

#2 Ultrabooks are Making a Comeback

When the tablet market emerged with the iPad in 2010, it was true to say that a lot of the market share gained from tablets had been taken from netbooks, laptops and desktop computer markets. However, with technology improving, laptops are becoming faster and lighter, with touchscreens, better resolution screens and better features. The 2 in 1 ultrabook is starting to make a comeback against the tablet.

For example, my current state, in terms of tech, consists of an iPad 3rd generation, a Samsung Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 Android Tablet, a Motorola Z Play smartphone and a Lenovo Yoga 700 top-of-the-spec Ultrabook.

• For emails, I use my Ultrabook.
• For internet browsing, I use my Ultrabook (if that is not there, I will use my smartphone).
• For watching YouTube, I use my smartphone.
• For watching anything else, I use my Ultrabook.
• For gaming, I use my smartphone.
• For listening to music, I use both my smartphone and Ultrabook.

The only thing I use my Samsung tablet for is its S-Pen, which is the only USP that separates the tablet from every other device. My iPad, unfortunately, gathers dust in the corner.

Although it is sad to see the tablet market start to die, we can’t disagree to say that we did not see this coming. Apple is the proof of this, where there newest iPad released this year did not even warrant a press conference release, and was the lowest upgrade in hardware seen from an iPad.