What RIAs should make of Blackberry CEO's prediction that iPad-like tablets will be dead in five years

Brooke’s Note: As those of you who know me well are aware, I rarely use a cell phone. I sure as heck don’t have an iPad. But I bought one once — for Nevin, our chief technologist. See: RIABiz makes its first major capital investment — an iPad. I figured that if I couldn’t find a use for such a thing, maybe he could. Since then, I have not seen that device and from what I can see, I won’t anytime soon. So Peter Giza made my day by letting me know that the days of the iPad are numbered. It has put me back on the tip of the burning, edge-cutting spear.

“Tablets will be dead in five years” was the headline of the Washington Post Technology section for April 30, 2013. This headline rang out after Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins told the Milken Institute in a speech said that he feels that smartphones will become the main source of compute power for a large portion of the user community. Thorsten was heard to have said “I doubt where there is a tablet a few years from now” and went on to say “you can just connect it to a big screen, and off you go”.

With all the new gadgetry surrounding us, what with tablets, smartphones, ultra-books and the like the question is what did Thorsten really mean? Was it a hyperbole or a bold statement of the future? The answer lies with consumers and, indeed, they are looking for consolidation of gadgetry — and the two ends may squeeze the middle.

This is especially true for business consumers who have real work to accomplish. Personally speaking I use my smartphone for at least 50% of my browsing and email activity and 90% of my online purchases are made via smartphone. So why do I need a laptop? That’s a great question.

Portability = Limitations

Tablets are great where presentation is the name of the game but they lack input efficiency i.e. a reasonable keyboard. Smartphones are great for portability but suffer from display size and input efficiency. This fact is clearly noted by polls recently made by those studying the use of tablets by RIAs in their practices when engaging clients.

Nearly all of those firms polled indicated that tablets are used purely as digital ink presentation platforms. Those firms that use tablets in their firms use them for the more basic functions of email, browsing, CRM and other non-intensive applications.

Gadget Consolidation

If as mentioned earlier there is a desire within the rank and file of consumers to reduce gadgetry; the desire for consolidation from the business community is tenfold. This demand will drive vendors to reinvent the docking station as we know it today.

Why shouldn’t you be able to take your PC with you everywhere in a compact package like an Apple iPad Mini or Samsung Galaxy Note II without compromising applications, display quality and data privacy and all the while remaining as the center of your communications universe via cellular and WiFi?

The answer is as Thorsten pointed out; the day is coming quickly that tablets could be obsolete. Consolidation is driving the conventional GPS consumer market into a tailspin as more smartphones are deployed with GPS capabilities. A vast majority now depend on their smartphones to deliver music and entertainment versus an iPod-like device and so on.

Not so distant future

Consolidation will drive development of docking systems that will enable users to snap into their home or office LAN and go to work or play. Snap in at the home office and now I have dual 23” HD displays, a HiFi listening experience and a real keyboard and touchscreen for the most efficient UI experience.

Devices and applications will be “context smart” knowing when they are local to the mother ship or abroad. They will release applications and privacy data from local cache thereby removing compliance issues associated with mobile data.

RIAs, tablets and smartphones

As mentioned earlier the polls are disappointing regarding tablet mode of use. An iPad represents a very expensive digital ink platform. I am amazed at this late date that there are few native apps of any consequence designed for business users.

While I am a big proponent of the Cloud there is a lot of room for hybrid native apps that can leverage Cloud application servers that pre-cook the data and result sets and feed them to smart native apps that turn the ingredients into a layer cake of extraordinary beauty.

Following along these lines I think that technology firms have done little to advance the use of native capabilities and perhaps because they are taking a wait and see approach based on predictions such as those presented here.

Its all about user experience

Whether it’s a PC, smartphone or tablet the focus must be on user experience. I’ve said this before; if you’re designing a product and you’re not designing for mobility then you’re designing yourself for failure.

We have been spoiled by the responsive design requirements of well-built mobile applications. For those of us who use smartphones we find ourselves trying to “touch” everything. I find myself trying to move things around my laptop by touching the screen all the time. Its intuitive and natural to want to touch.

Using responsive design and building with mobility in mind doesn’t guarantee success but it certainly makes us think more about the process flow we are solving for. This usually results in better application work flow and efficiency which in turn results in better user experience.

I think that technology companies focused on the RIA space are trying to do better in the area but there is a lot of improvement yet to be made.

Betting on the tablet — It’s all about presentation

I want to make one thing clear before I go one about mobile and native apps; it isn’t always about using RIA applications in a mobile environment outside the office. Mobile is mobile whether you are untethered in your office conference room or outside of the office. Mobile is about efficient access to information and being able to act responsively to that information to produce a result whether that result is a purchase, creating a report or making a market trade.

Responsive design demands pristine presentation based on current application context. Put another way; responsive design demands applications present information in a manner that enhances user experience and efficiency by orders of magnitude.

The way that we interact with tablets demand a new way of thinking and approaching UI and work flow design. In the past developers could throw something against the wall and see if it stuck with users. In today’s fast paced and impatient world of mobile computing that luxury is gone. See: Advisor Tested: iPad proves ideal for advisors on-the-go; the surprise is the effect on clients.

For this reason we are seeing service providers large and small design their applications to work with tablets and other mobi platforms. The recent ENV2 release by Envestnet is one of a long list of service providers are betting the future on the concepts tablets enforce, not so much the tablets themselves. See: Envestnet breaks out ENV2 to oohs, aahs and a few groans at its bust-out event in Chicago.

RIAs will adopt these apps when and if they can be proven to improve user experience and work efficiency. We are starting to see significant UI improvements however application and data integration remain illusive.

Is there a tablet in your future?

Whether it is called a tablet, phablet, convertible, etc., everyone will eventually have a portable computing platform in the near future. These context smart mobile devices will integrate tightly with that larger computing system we affectionately refer to as the Cloud.

John Gage probably didn’t comprehend the prophetic words utter under Sun Microsystems motto “The network is the computer” but here we are today.

Some interesting global statistics:

Worldwide smartphone shipments: Android 70%; iOS 21%; Other 9% — source IDC fourth quarter 2012

Worldwide tablet shipments: Android 43%; iOS 54%; Other 3% — source IDC fourth quarter 2012

Market share: Apple and Samsung own 51% of the global market — source IDC fourth quarter 2012

Quality metrics: Statistically Apple and Android are on par with each other — source uTest

App download volume: Android 51%; iOS 40%; Other 9% — source Canalys first quarter 2013

Revenue share: Android 20%; iOS 74%; Other 6% — source Canalys first quarter 2013

Business use: Android 35%; iOS 62%; Other 3% — source Citrix fourth quarter 2012