tablet computer for the computer input device see graphics tablet for other uses see tablet tablet pc redirects here for the class of microsoft windowsbased tablets see microsoft tablet pc convertible computer redirects here for the ibm computer of this name see ibm pc convertible apples ipad left and amazons fire right two popular tablet computers a tablet computer commonly shortened to tablet is a mobile device typically with a mobile operating system and lcd touchscreen display processing circuitry and a rechargeable battery in a single thin flat package tablets being computers do what other personal computers do but lack some io capabilities that others have modern tablets largely resemble modern smartphones the only differences being that tablets are relatively larger than smartphones with screens 7 inches 18cm or larger measured diagonally and may not support access to a cellular network the touchscreen display is operated by gestures executed by finger or stylus instead of the mouse trackpad and keyboard of larger computers portable computers can be classified according to the presence and appearance of physical keyboards two species of tablet the slate and booklet do not have physical keyboards and usually accept text and other input by use of a virtual keyboard shown on their touchscreen displays to compensate for their lack of a physical keyboard most tablets can connect to independent physical keyboards by wireless bluetooth or usb 2in1 pcs have keyboards distinct from tablets the form of the tablet was conceptualized in the middle of the 20th century stanley kubrick depicted fictional tablets in the 1968 science fiction film 2001 a space odyssey and prototyped and developed in the last two decades of that century in 2010 history 1888 telautograph patent schema history of tablet computers wireless tablet device portrayed in the movie 2001 a space odyssey 1968 the tablet computer and its associated operating system began with the development of pen computing which used a sheet of paper as display and a pen attached to electromechanical actuators throughout the 20th century devices with these characteristics have been imagined and created whether as blueprints prototypes or commercial products in addition to many academic and research systems several companies released commercial products in the 1980s with various inputoutput types tried out fictional and prototype tablets tablet computers appeared in a number of works of science fiction in the second half of the 20th century all helped to promote and disseminate the concept to a wider audience examples include isaac asimov described a calculator pad in his novel foundation 1951 stanislaw lem described the opton in his novel return from the stars 1961 numerous similar devices were depicted in gene roddenberrys 1966 star trek the original series arthur c clarkes newspad was depicted in stanley kubricks film 2001 a space odyssey 1968 douglas adams described a tablet computer in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and the associated comedy of the same name 1978 the scifi tv series star trek the next generation featured tablet computers which were designated as padds a device more powerful than todays tablets appeared briefly in the mote in gods eye 1974 the star wars franchise features datapads first described in print in 1991s heir to the empire and depicted on screen in 1999s the phantom menace additionally reallife projects either proposed or created tablet computers such as in 1968 computer scientist alan kay envisioned a kiddicomp which outlines functionality similar to that supplied via a laptop computer or in some of its other incarnations a tablet or slate computer with the exception of near eternal battery life adults could also use a dynabook but the target audience was children in 1979 the idea of a touchscreen tablet that could detect an external force applied to one point on the screen was patented in japan by a team at hitachi consisting of masao hotta yoshikazu miyamoto norio yokozawa and yoshimitsu oshima who later received a us patent for their idea in 1992 atari showed developers the stylus later renamed stpad the stpad was based on the tosgem atari st platform and prototyped early handwriting recognition shiraz shivjis company momentus demonstrated in the same time a failed x86 msdos based pen computer with its own gui in 1994 the european union initiated the newspad project inspired by clarke and kubricks fictional work during the november 2000 comdex microsoft used the term tablet pc to describe a prototype handheld device they were demonstrating in 2001 ericsson mobile communications announced an experimental product named the delphipad which was developed in cooperation with the centre for wireless communications in singapore with a touchsensitive screen netscape navigator as a web browser and linux as its operating system early tablets apple newton messagepad apples first produced tablet released in 1993 following earlier tablet computer products such as the pencept penpad all three products were based on extended versions of the msdos operating system in 1992 ibm announced in april and shipped to developers in october the 2521 thinkpad which ran the go corporations penpoint os also based on penpoint was atts eo personal communicator from 1993 which ran on atts own hardware including their own att hobbit cpu apple computer launched the apple newton personal digital assistant in 1993 it used apples own new newton os initially running on hardware manufactured by motorola and incorporating an arm cpu that apple had specifically codeveloped with acorn computers the operating system and platform design were later licensed to sharp and digital ocean who went on to manufacture their own variants in 1996 palm inc released the first of the palm os based palmpilot touch and stylus based pda the touch based devices initially incorporating a motorola dragonball 68000 cpu also in 1996 fujitsu released the stylistic 1000 tablet format pc running microsoft windows 95 on a 100mhz amd486 dx4 cpu with 8 mb ram offering stylus input with the option of connecting a conventional keyboard and mouse intel announced a strongarm the screen was 104 or 121 and was touch sensitive it had slots for sim cards to enable support of television setup box freepad were sold in norway and the middle east but the company was dissolved in 2003 a fujitsu siemens lifebook tablet running windows xp released in 2003 in april 2000 microsoft launched the pocket pc 2000 using their touch capable windows ce 30 operating system the nokia n800 nokia had plans for an internet tablet since before 2000 an early model was test manufactured in 2001 the nokia m510 which was running on epoc and featuring an opera browser speakers and a 10inch 800600 screen but it was not released because of fears that the market was not ready for it before the release of ipad axiotron introduced following the launch of the ultramobile pc intel started the mobile internet device initiative which took the same hardware and combined it with a tabletized linux configuration intel codeveloped the lightweight moblin mobile linux operating system following the successful launch of the atom cpu series on netbooks in 2010 nokia and intel combined the maemo and moblin projects to form meego a linuxbased operating system supports netbooks and tablets the first tablet using meego was the neofonie wetab launched september 2010 in germany the wetab used an extended version of the meego operating system called wetab os wetab os adds runtimes for android and adobe air and provides a proprietary user interface optimized for the wetab device on september 27 2011 the linux foundation announced that meego would be replaced in 2012 by tizen modern tablets android was the first of the 2000sera dominating platforms for tablet computers to reach the market in 2008 the first plans for androidbased tablets appeared the first products were released in 2009 among them was the archos 5 a pocketsized model with a 5inch touchscreen that was first released with a proprietary operating system and later in 2009 released with android 14 the camangi webstation was released in q2 2009 the first lte android tablet appeared late 2009 and was made by icd for verizon this unit was called the ultra but a version called vega was released around the same time ultra had a 7inch display while vegas was 15 inches many more products followed in 2010 several manufacturers waited for android honeycomb specifically adapted for use with tablets which debuted in february 2011 apple is often credited for defining a new class of consumer device with the ipad the blackberry playbook was announced in september 2010 that ran the blackberry tablet os as of february 2014 83 of mobile app developers were targeting tablets in late 2017 the ipad pro received the ios 11 update adding the ability to run multiple windows drag and drop from one app to another and browse a users files types crossover tablet device types from 2014 microsoft surface pro 3 laplet and sony xperia z ultra phablet next to a generic blue lighter to indicate their sizes comparison of several mini tablet computers amazon kindle fire left ipad mini center and google nexus 7 right samsungs galaxy note series were the first commercially successful phablets microsoft surface pro 3 a prominent 2in1 detachable tablet lenovo yoga a 2in1 convertible tablet with a physical keyboard that can be folded at any angle asus transformer pad a 2in1 detachable tablet powered by the android operating system nvidia shield tablet notable gaming tablet tablets can be loosely grouped into several categories by physical size kind of operating system installed input and output technology and uses slate the size of a slate varies but slates begin at 6 inches approximately 15 cm mini tablet mini tablets are smaller and weigh less than slates with typical screen sizes between 78 inches 1820cm the first commercially successful mini tablets were introduced by amazoncom kindle fire barnes noble nook tablet and samsung galaxy tab in 2011 and by google nexus 7 in 2012 they operate identically to ordinary tablets but have lower specifications compared to them on september 14 2012 amazon inc released an upgraded version of the kindle fire the kindle fire hd with higher screen resolution and more features compared to its predecessor yet remaining only 7 inches on july 24 2013 google released an upgraded version of the nexus 7 with fhd display dual cameras stereo speakers more color accuracy performance improvement builtin wireless charging and a variant with 4g lte support for att tmobile and verizon in september 2013 amazon further updated the fire tablet with the kindle fire hdx in november 2013 apple released the ipad mini 2 which remained at 79 inches and nearly matched the hardware of the ipad air phablet phablet smartphones and tablets are similar devices differentiated by the former typically having smaller screens and most tablets lacking cellular network capability since 2010 crossover touchscreen smartphones with screens larger than 5 inches have been released that size is generally considered larger than a traditional smartphone creating the hybrid category of the phablet by forbes and other publications phablet is a portmanteau of phone and tablet at the time of the introduction of the first phablets they had screens of 53 to 55 inches but as of 2017 screen sizes up to 55 inches are considered typical examples of phablets from 2017 and onward are the samsung galaxy note series newer models of 57 inches the lg v10v20 57 inches the sony xperia xa ultra the huawei mate 9 59 inches and the huawei honor mediapad x2 7 inches 2in1 2in1 pc distinct from tablets 2in1 pcs all have physical keyboards but they are either concealable by folding them back and under the touchscreen 2in1 convertible or detachable 2in1 detachable but 2in1s typically also can display a virtual keyboard on their touchscreens when their physical keyboards are concealed or detached some 2in1s have processors and operating systems like those of laptops while having the flexibility of operation as a tablet a 2in1 pc is a hybrid or combination of a tablet and laptop computer that has features of both an essential feature of a 2in1 is a desktop operating system such as windows 10 as opposed to a mobile operating system additionally 2in1s may have typical laptop io ports such as usb 3 and displayport and may connect to traditional pc peripheral devices and external displays therefore they are distinct from tablets although they can operate just like them simple tablets are primarily used as media consumption devices while 2in1s have capacity for both media consumption and content creation and therefore 2in1s are often called laptop or desktop replacement computers there are two species of 2in1s convertibles have a chassis design by which their physical keyboard may be concealed by flippingfolding the keyboard behind the chassis examples include 2in1 pcs of the lenovo yoga series detachables or hybrids have physical keyboards that may be detached from their chassis even while the 2in1 is operating examples include 2in1 pcs of the asus transformer pad series the ipad pro and the microsoft surface book and surface pro gaming tablet some tablets are modified by adding physical gamepad buttons such as dpad and thumb sticks for better gaming experience combined with the touchscreen and all other features of a typical tablet computer most of these tablets are targeted to run native os games and emulator games nvidias shield tablet with an 8inch 200mm display and running android is an example it runs android games purchased from google play store pc games can also be streamed to the tablet from computers with some higher end models of nvidiapowered video cards the nintendo switch hybrid console is also a gaming tablet that runs on nintendo switch system software features detachable joycon controllers with motion controls and three gaming modes tabletop mode using its kickstand traditional dockedtv mode and handheld mode booklet booklets are dualtouchscreen tablet computers with a clamshell design that can fold like a laptop examples include the microsoft courier which was discontinued in 2010 and the toshiba libretto w100 customized business tablet customized business tablets are built specifically for a business customers particular needs from a hardware and software perspective and delivered in a businesstobusiness transaction for example in hardware a transportation company may find that the consumergrade gps module in an offtheshelf tablet provides insufficient accuracy so a tablet can be customized and embedded with a professionalgrade antenna to provide a better gps signal such tablets may also be ruggedized for field use for a software example the same transportation company might remove certain software functions in the android system such as the internet browser to reduce costs from unnecessary cellular network data consumption of an employee and add custom package management software other applications may call for a resistive touchscreen and other special hardware and software games on a ziosk table ordering tablet at an olive garden restaurant a table ordering tablet is a touchscreen tablet computer designed for use in casual restaurants hardware system architecture see also comparison of tablet computers two major architectures dominate the tablet market arm has been the cpu architecture of choice for manufacturers of smartphones 95 arm pdas digital cameras 80 arm settop boxes dsl routers smart televisions 70 arm storage devices and tablet computers 95 arm this dominance began with the release of the mobilefocused and comparatively powerefficient 32bit arm610 processor originally designed for the apple newton in 1993 and arm3using acorn a4 laptop in 1992 the chip was adopted by psion palm and nokia for pdas and later smartphones camera phones cameras etc arms licensing model supported this success by allowing device manufacturers to license alter and fabricate custom soc derivatives tailored to their own products this has helped manufacturers extend battery life and shrink component count along with the size of devices the multiple licensees ensured that multiple fabricators could supply nearidentical products while encouraging price competition this forced unit prices down to a fraction of their x86 equivalents the architecture has historically had limited support from microsoft with only windows ce available but with the 2012 release of windows 8 microsoft announced additional support for the architecture shipping their own armbased tablet computer branded the microsoft surface as well as an x8664 intel core i5 variant branded as microsoft surface pro see also mobile internet device intel mid platforms display samsung galaxy tab demonstrating multitouch a key component among tablet computers is touch input on a touchscreen liquidcrystal display lcd this allows the user to navigate easily and type with a virtual keyboard on the screen or press other icons on the screen to open apps or files the first tablet to do this was the gridpad by grid systems corporation the tablet featured both a stylus a penlike tool to aid with precision in a touchscreen device as well as an onscreen keyboard touchscreens usually come in one of two forms resistive touchscreens are passive and respond to pressure on the screen they allow a high level of precision useful in emulating a pointer as is common in tablet computers but may require calibration because of the high resolution a stylus or fingernail is often used stylusoriented systems are less suited to multitouch capacitive touchscreens tend to be less accurate but more responsive than resistive devices because they require a conductive material such as a finger tip for input they are not common among stylusoriented devices but are prominent on consumer devices most fingerdriven capacitive screens do not currently support pressure input except for the iphone 6s and later models but some tablets use a pressuresensitive stylus or active pen some tablets can recognize individual palms while some professionalgrade tablets use pressuresensitive films such as those on graphics tablets some capacitive touchscreens can detect the size of the touched area and the pressure used since mid2010s most tablets use capacitive touchscreens with multitouch unlike earlier resistive touchscreen devices which users needed styluses in order to perform inputs handwriting recognition chinese characters like this one meaning person can be written by handwriting recognition mandarin rn korean in japanese jin nin hito cantonese jan4 the character has two strokes the first shown here in brown and the second in red the black area represents the starting position of the writing instrument some arm powered tablets such as the galaxy note 10 support a stylus and support handwriting recognition wacom and ntrig digital pens provide approximately 2500 dpi resolution for handwriting exceeding the resolution of capacitive touch screens by more than a factor of 10 these pens also support pressure sensitivity allowing for variablewidth strokebased characters such as chinesejapanesekorean writing due to their builtin capability of pressure sensing pressure is also used in digital art applications such as autodesk sketchbook other features after 2007 with access to capacitive screens and the success of the iphone other features became common such as multitouch features in which the user can touch the screen in multiple places to trigger actions and other natural user interface features as well as flash memory solid state storage and instant on warmbooting external usb and bluetooth keyboards defined tablets most tablets released since mid2010 use a version of an arm processor for longer battery life the arm cortex family is powerful enough for tasks such as internet browsing light production work and mobile games other features are highdefinition antiglare display touchscreen lower weight and longer battery life than a comparablysized laptop wireless local area and internet connectivity usually with wifi standard and optional mobile broadband bluetooth for connecting peripherals and communicating with local devices ports for wired connections and charging for example usb ports early devices had ir support and could work as a tv remote controller docking station keyboard and additional connectivity onboard flash memory ports for removable storage various cloud storage services for backup and syncing data across devices local storage on a lan speech recognition google introduced voice input in android 21 in 2009 and voice actions in 22 in 2010 with up to five languages now around 40 siri was introduced as a systemwide personal assistant on the iphone 4s in 2011 and now supports nearly 20 languages in both cases the voice input is sent to central servers to perform general speech recognition and therefore requires a network connection for more than simple commands near field communication with other compatible devices including isoiec 14443 rfid tags software operating system tablets like conventional pcs use several different operating systems though dualbooting is rare tablet operating systems come in two classes desktop computer operating system mobile operating system desktop osbased tablets are currently thicker and heavier they require more storage and more cooling and give less battery life they can run processorintensive graphical applications in addition to mobile apps and have more ports mobilebased tablets are the reverse and run only mobile apps they can use battery life conservatively because the processor is significantly smaller this allows the battery to last much longer than the common laptop in q1 2018 android tablets had 62 of the market apples ios had 234 of the market and windows 10 had 146 of the market android android operating system android is a linuxbased operating system that google offers as open source under the apache license it is designed primarily for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers android supports lowcost arm systems and others the first tablets running android were released in 2009 ios ios and ipad the ipad runs on ios which was created for the iphone and ipod touch the first ipad was released in 2011 although built on the same underlying unix implementation as macos its user interface is radically different ios is designed for fingers and has none of the features that required a stylus on earlier tablets apple introduced multitouch gestures such as moving two fingers apart or together to zoom in or out also known as pinch to zoom windows windows 10 following windows for pen computing for windows 31 in 1991 microsoft supported tablets running windows xp under the microsoft tablet pc name in 2008 microsoft showed a prototype of a twoscreen tablet called microsoft courier but cancelled the project in 2012 microsoft released windows 8 which features significant changes to various aspects of the operating systems user interface and platform which are designed for touchbased devices such as tablets the operating system also introduced an application store and a new style of application optimized primarily for use on tablets released in july 2015 windows 10 introduces what microsoft described as universal apps expanding on metrostyle apps these apps can be designed to run across multiple microsoft product families with nearly identical codeincluding pcs tablets smartphones embedded systems xbox one surface hub and windows holographic the windows user interface was revised to handle transitions between a mouseoriented interface and a touchscreenoptimized interface based on available input devicesparticularly on 2in1 pcs both interfaces include an updated start menu windows 10 replaced all earlier editions of windows hybrid os operation several hardware companies have built hybrid devices with the possibility to work with both the windows 10 and android operating systems application store see also app store apps that do not come preinstalled with the system are supplied through online distribution these sources known as app stores provide centralized catalogs of software and allow one click ondevice software purchasing installation and updates mobile device suppliers may adopt a walled garden approach wherein the supplier controls what software applications apps are available software development kits are restricted to approved software developers this can be used to reduce the impact of malware provide software with an approved content rating control application quality and exclude competing vendors sales around 2010 tablet use by businesses jumped as business have started to use them for conferences events and trade shows in 2012 intel reported that their tablet program improved productivity for about 19000 of their employees by an average of 57 minutes a day as of the beginning of 2014 44 of us online consumers own tablets unit sales global tablet market 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017q3 2018q3 units million 176 600 1163 1954 2160 gartner estimate2301 idc estimate 2068 1748 399 364 growth 2409 938 680 105 101 idc estimate 156 87 86 2010 to 2014 figures are estimated by gartner 2014 to 2018 figures are estimated by idc by manufacturer tablet market share in percent vendor q3 2012 q3 2013 q3 2014 q3 2015 q3 2016 q3 2017 q3 2018 apple 402 297 221 196 215 259 266 samsung 124 222 174 160 151 150 146 others 473 491 609 644 634 592 588 note others consists of small vendors with mostly less market share 2017 and 2018 data now breaks out amazon hwawei and lenovo added into others for consistency by operating system according to a survey conducted by the online publishers association opa now called digital content next dcn in march 2012 it found that 72 of tablet owners had an ipad while 32 had an android tablet by 2012 android tablet adoption had increased 52 of tablet owners owned an ipad while 51 owned an androidpowered tablet percentages do not add up to 100 because some tablet owners own more than one type use sleep electronic media and sleep the blue wavelength of light from backlit tablets may impact ones ability to fall asleep when reading at night through the suppression of melatonin by plane because among other things waves emitted by this type of device the use of any type of electronic device during the takeoff and landing phases was totally prohibited on board commercial flights on 13 november 2013 the european aviation safety agency easa according to the us agency faa announced that the use of mobile terminals could be authorized on the flights of european airlines during these phases from 2014 onwards condition that the cellular functions are deactivated airplane mode activated 38 easa then formally confirmed this information on december 11 201339 tablets ereaders smartphones mp3 players and portable gaming consoles are affected by these announcements tourism some french historical monuments are equipped with digital tactile tablets called histopad it is an application integrated with an ipad mini offering an interaction in augmented and virtual reality with several pieces of the visit the visitor being able to take control of his visit in an interactive and personalized way professional use for specific sectors some professionals for example in the construction industry insurance experts lifeguards or surveyors use socalled rugged shelf models in the field that can withstand extreme hot or cold shocks or climatic environments even hardened in addition via satellite iridium type of connectivity this type of tablet such as thorium x for example can be used in areas where there is no connectivity comparison of tablet computers lists of mobile computers history of tablet computers laptop a small portable computer with a keyboard smartbook ultramobile pc mobile device pen computing media related to tablet computers at wikimedia commons vtecomputer sizesclasses of computersmicrocomputerpersonalcomputerstationary workstation desktop home personal supercomputer portable tabletop smart tv interactive kiosk game arcade cabinet system board home console microconsole sff nettop plug smart speaker mobilelaptop desktop replacement 2in1 subnotebook netbook smartbook ultrabook ultramobile pc tablet ultramobile pc 2in1 phablet tabletop handheld handheld pc palmtop pc pocket computer pda electronic organizer mobile phone feature phone smartphone phablet pmp ereader handheld game console portablemobile data terminal calculator scientific programmable graphing wearable digital wristwatch calculator watch smartwatch smartglasses smart ring midrange server minicomputer supermini large super mainframe minisuper others microcontroller nanocomputer singleboard computer smartdust wireless sensor network vteebooksformats epub fictionbook cbrcbz kindle file format mobipocket pdf plain text readingdevices amazon kindle barnes noble nook bookeen elonex ebook entourage edge hanlin ereader iriver story kobo ereader onyx boox plastic logic reader pocketbook ereader rocket ebook softbook smartphones tablets tolino software adobe acrobat adobe digital editions aldiko blio bluefire reader calibre fbreader google play books ibooks kindle app kitabu kobo lektz lucifox okular overdrive media console snapplify stdu viewer sumatra pdf editing abbyy finereader abiword adobe indesign adobe robohelp atlantis word processor booktype calibre calligra author exelearning help manual helpndoc ibooks author istudio publisher latex libreoffice madcap flare oxygen xml editor pageplus pages quarkxpress scrivener sigil writer2epub vendorscommercial amazon kindle store baen free library barnes noble booktrack feedbooks google play ibooks store kobo bookstore sony reader store smashwords noncommercial faded page hathitrust internet archive project gutenberg australia canada wikisource related topics academic journal publishing reform braille ebook comparison of ebook readers comparison of ios ebook reader software comparison of android ebook reader software ebook lending electronic publishing ibooks author conference international digital publishing forum kindle single opds reflowable document semantic publishing authority control gnd 76029645 