This company ‘will win’ the tablet war \ The New Daily
written by Jackson Stiles Life Editor the New Daily
But there may only be dust and picked-bare bones left to take as victory spoils.
Microsoft is going to conquer Apple in the tablet stakes, an Australian tech expert has predicted.
A report released in early December is bad news for the iPad. For the first time this year, the tech giant didn’t lead online tablet sales in the US for a calendar month (October), according to 1010data Facts for Ecom Insights.
Microsoft trounced its rival 45 per cent to 17 per cent with the release of the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.
Tech expert Paul Lin of app development company Buuna interpreted this as the beginning of the end for Apple’s dominance of the tablet market, heralding the Surface Book as the new leader that would “slay” its rival.
“Microsoft are back in a serious way,” Mr Lin told The New Daily.
“After being overwhelmed by the iPhone juggernaut, which has far outsold Microsoft’s products such as Windows and Xbox combined, this niche product is a great attempt by Microsoft to make up some serious ground on the old enemy.”
The Surface Book is a hybrid tablet with computing power similar to a laptop that also comes with a detachable keyboard and a stylus. They range in price from mid-$2000 to nearly $5000, which they can price out even Apple.
These creative new features – detachable screen, keyboard and stylus – were copied this year by Apple, seemingly in an attempt to stay relevant, The New Daily reported in September.
Despite this attempt at replication, it is Microsoft’s tablet, not Apple’s, that is the “next cool thing”, according to Mr Lin. It seems consumers see the creator of stodgy old products like Windows and Internet Explorer as the new innovator.
A key selling point of the Surface Book is its versatility
“There is a buzz about it with people in the know, those early adopters who often heavily influence the masses,” Mr Lin said.
“Apple has been stagnating for quite a while. People waiting for exciting things to come from Apple, continue to wait. As it stands, those ‘wow’ moments are not really coming.
“Microsoft took quite a while to come up with this device, but that time has paid off. It has become the next cool thing.”
Mr Lin rated its best feature as the fact it straddles both the tablet and laptop market, whereas Apple has mostly stuck to its original form, apart from the iPad Pro, which The New Daily reviewed poorly in early December.
“It is a very good laptop, but it is also a very good tablet. So you are not cheapening out on two-in-one, sub-par versions of both. You are getting a premium version of both,” he said.
A tech futurist agreed that this prediction was sound, but warned that Microsoft’s potential victory could be shallow. He predicted the death of tablets, not Apple.
“Overall, the sentiment is correct. The Surface Book is definitely outselling the iPad. It’s the first time Apple has been in decline,” futurist Morris Miselowski told The New Daily.
He agreed that Apple is not innovating its tablets, but predicted it would matter little, as consumers turn increasingly to beefed-up laptops and smartphones and well away from bulky touchscreens.
“The reality is, I think the entire sector of tablets is in absolute decline. Everything I’ve seen over the years and what I’ve seen recently tells me that. The biggest sales were in 2011 and they’ve dropped steadily ever since.
“They’re fighting over a marketplace that is diminishing anyway. These devices struggle to find a large audience and I think they are going to continually struggle to find that large audience.”
So if you’re hoping to stay cool in 2016, perhaps consider a Surface Book, or nothing at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What did the 2015 tablet market competition reveal about the future of portable computing?
The 2015 tablet market told a story about converging form factors: the iPad had created and dominated the consumer tablet market but was facing stagnant growth as smartphone screens grew larger (reducing the use case for a separate device) and as users sought more productivity capability than iOS could deliver; the Microsoft Surface had identified a genuine gap between the laptop and the tablet by offering a device that could credibly do both — the ‘laptop replacement’ positioning that initially seemed overambitious proved prescient; and Android tablets had struggled to find a distinct positioning between Android phones and Windows laptops. Looking back from 2026, the tablet market has settled into a pattern where the premium productivity tablet (iPad Pro with keyboard, Surface Pro) has become a genuine laptop substitute for many use cases, while the consumer entertainment tablet remains a specialised device with declining growth.
Q: What does the tablet war outcome reveal about how technology product categories evolve and consolidate?
The tablet category evolution reveals consistent patterns in technology product development: categories that are created by a single innovative product (the iPad in 2010) face the challenge of justifying their existence when adjacent categories improve — smartphones got bigger, laptops got lighter, the tablet’s unique position narrowed; the categories that survive this challenge do so by finding a use case that is genuinely better served by their specific form factor (the iPad Pro for creative professionals, the Surface for enterprise productivity, the e-reader tablet for long-form reading) rather than trying to be all things to all users; and the consumer electronics ‘war’ framing is commercially useful for media coverage but misleading as strategic analysis — the most durable technology products are not those that ‘win’ by eliminating competitors but those that find and own a specific use case deeply.
Q: What is the current state of the tablet market in 2026, and what does it reveal about portable computing’s trajectory?
The 2026 tablet market reflects the consolidation that the 2015 signals pointed toward: iPad dominates the premium consumer and creative professional segments with the iPad Pro having genuinely displaced laptops for many creative workflows; Surface has established the productivity hybrid as a legitimate enterprise device category; and Android tablets (particularly Samsung Galaxy Tab) have found a home in enterprise and education deployments where Google ecosystem integration is valued. The most interesting 2026 development is the pressure on all tablet categories from AI-capable smartphones that can perform tasks previously requiring the larger screen and more capable hardware of a tablet. The form factor war is not over; it has entered a phase where AI capability rather than hardware specification is the primary differentiator.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a technology markets, consumer electronics, or digital business strategy keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
written by Jackson Stiles Life Editor the New Daily But there may only be dust and picked-bare bones left to take as victory spoils. Microsoft is going to conquer Apple in the tablet stakes, an Australian tech expert has predicted. A report released in early December is bad news.
When signals like This company ‘will win’ the tablet war \ The New Daily emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether This company ‘will win’ the tablet war \ The New Daily will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
