Pills and torrijas, sweet snacks that herald a change in the cycle

It happens almost imperceptibly. Today you so calmly drink coffee with skimmed milk and saccharin, and the next day you squeeze two XXL French toasts. They are an unmistakable sign that Holy Week has come, and it would be repentance not to be carried away by such a sweet temptation..

Torrichi is a warning signal telling us that the year has already passed. The end of one cycle for the beginning of another. The same is happening with tablets, the opportunistic wild card that brands are pulling out of their sleeves to keep their profit and loss statements at the same level.

Have you noticed lately major brands began to present tablets (or there are rumors that they are going to give them) as if there is no tomorrow? These are their torrijas and they indicate that brands are getting ready for the change of cycle they will have to endure.

I like to go to the analysis section of Computerhoy.com and, with my hands on my hips, proudly watch the result of our work, like a bricklayer who got a job. It was then, looking a little better, that I noticed number of tablets analyzed by us recently. Chance? I don’t think.

Market analysts such as IDC have already noted that the smartphone segment has been in sales stagnation for five years and forecasts do not point to green shoots in the medium term.

To make matters worse, laptops that many already thought were dead years ago have risen from their graves in the midst of a pandemic in the purest Walking Dead style, and it seems like they came with a mambo wish, so much so that even Samsung has relaunched its laptop line.

Faced with the kind of stagnating mobile sales scenario that has fueled growth over the past decade, brands are defending their balance sheets as if it were the last croquette in mom’s bowl, creating ecosystems of devices in which some complement others: headphones, watches, speakers, and now tablets. Does it ring a bell?

I have enough gray in my beard and have spent enough time assembling letters on microchips and diagrams to watch a retiree with his hands behind his back watching a construction site, the same signs many years ago.

In 2009, smartphones began to show their potential to a world where computers were at the center of productivity, entertainment and communication, and laptops are a way to carry the world under your arm. A strong hand, but at that time the laptops weighed themselves.

Laptops simply couldn’t compete with touch screens and such compact designs and color screens. Let’s see what we come from leave us eyelashes playing snake on the nokia screen. They were easy.

Sales of laptops in subsequent years did not stop falling. It was then that manufacturers, mainly laptop manufacturers, found a solution to save on furniture and diversify income: yes, tablets, and if not, then the result of a crazy night between laptop and tablet, 2-in-1 transformers.

The market has been filled with tablets in every size and shape you can imagine. You opened a bank account – in those days you were served in branches – and left the branch with a tablet under your arm. You bought 100 grams of ham and… wow! They already screwed up the tablet for you.

Market saturation made gradually lost interest in tablets and almost disappeared from the catalogs, leaving only a few models, even today they stoically endure the passage of years updating its features.

Brands like Huawei with its MatePad and now HarmonyOS, or Samsung have taken major steps in this direction and are one of the few brands that have retained their tablet lineup to date. In fact, we’ve just reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, the brand’s coolest tablet yet.

As it should have been, even Apple dared to release a tablet that in real life iswhat other tablets did he sell, and it stayed closer to its goal of ending notebook production, as demonstrated by the 5th generation iPad Air with M1 processor that just passed through our lab.

Four years after Xiaomi locked its tablet in a forgotten drawer, Xiaomi is back with its Xiaomi Pad 5. The pads we’ve already tried. Vivo, for its part, is getting ready to launch its Vivo Pad tablet.

Planting tablets is already a reality and we will have them for every taste. From professionals looking to replace laptops, like the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro, which my colleague Alejandro reviewed a few weeks ago, to the most compact and versatile, like the 6th generation iPad Mini.

There are signs and, like French toast, The advent of tablets marks the end of the smartphone cycle that, like laptops, they’ll have to reinvent themselves to keep surfing the waves. In the meantime, decide what screen size you’re most comfortable with on a tablet, because you’re likely to buy one in the next couple of years.