Not long ago, we were assured the iPad and its ilk were destined to dominate our everyday lives.
"Tablets will rule the future," one analyst said three years ago, forecasting sales would swell to 375 million in 2016.
Nobody is that bullish anymore.
The tablet sector recently suffered its first drop, according to tech consultancy Canalys–down 12 per cent over the final three months of 2014 compared with the same period the previous year.
Apple, the market leader, sold 15 per cent fewer iPads over 2014 as a whole compared with 2013.
Barcelona's Mobile World Congress (MWC) is attempting to reinvigorate interest this week–a Sony leak indicates its will unveil a model with "industry-leading battery performance."
But research house Gartner is now saying the sector's growth will be limited to 259 million sales next year, meaning PCs will continue to be more popular.
One suggestion is that the experts got carried away with the early rush to the tills.
"The initial growth that got people excited was inflated by the fact that early-adopters adopted faster than usual," Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at KWP Comtech tells the BBC.
"In other words, the initial sales curve was steeper than that for smartphones, and this led to the idea that tablets would do much better than they have.
"What happened, though, was that it became apparent that the value proposition to your average Joe on the street wasn't clear. People asked, 'Why do I need to get this when my phone already does a lot of the same things?'"
For those that did buy, and love running apps on a larger screen, there may also be little pressure to upgrade.
"We're getting bigger and bigger phones–the iPhone 6 Plus is big, the latest Samsung handsets are big–so there's less differentiation between the two categories," says Michael O'Hara, from the GSM Association, which hosts MWC.
"And operators offer less subsidies for tablets [because most are bought without a Sim card], so that's also probably a factor in the refresh cycle."
By spreading the cost of a new handset across the lifetime of a contract, operators not only make it seem relatively cheap to switch to a new smartphone, they also protect the profit margins of top-end mobiles.
By contrast, Android-device manufacturers, in particular, have felt the need to make the prices of their tablets more keen.
This becomes apparent if you try to buy the devices from them off-contract.
All of which gives the device makers an added incentive to focus their marketing spend on their phones rather than their tablets.
Furthermore, many of the things that drive consumers to buy new phones– better cameras, built-in footstep trackers, fingerprint sensors, touch-and-pay facilities and extended battery life –don't have the same appeal if offered on tablets, since the bigger devices are less likely to be used outdoors.
Many tablet owners spend most of their time on tablets watching videos, visiting web sites, playing games and checking social-media accounts rather than creating complex documents
And despite the efforts of Microsoft, Apple and Google to convince us that their latest models can be used to make complex spreadsheets, videos, music and more, many want to use them to consume media rather than create it.
"If you just want to read stuff and watch Netflix on your tablet at home, some of the early tablets are just as good as the latest devices," says Stuart Miles, founder of the gadget review site Pocket-lint.
"If you are intrigued by a tablet, you've probably already bought one, so there really needs to be a paradigm shift, a change in what it offers you, to convince you to upgrade."
That's not to say innovation is limited to making tablets thinner.
Lenovo recently unveiled the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, which features a built-in projector and subwoofer.
The pitch is that this could be useful for presentations and letting groups watch movies together, although reviewers suggest the low resolution and brightness of the projector limits its appeal.
Perhaps more intriguing is the fact that the Yoga's screen is 13.3 inches–much bigger than the norm.
Microsoft has also gone large with its 12-inch Windows-powered Surface Pro 3, Samsung has introduced a 12.2-inch tablet and there are rumours Apple is working on a similarly proportioned iPad.
Bigger, better?
When it comes to tablets, Milanesi thinks size will count if consumers, schools and businesses are to consider them PC-replacements.
"If you are working with productivity apps, like Office, having a bigger screen helps," she says.
"Plus, if you don't want to use an external keyboard, having a larger screen gives you more real estate so less of it is covered when you type.
"It also helps with multitasking–having your Twitter feed or e-mail on one side and being able to write a document on the other side, or students having a text book on one side and writing on the other–it's just more flexible."
However, she notes, the shift also makes tablets considerably less comfortable to carry around.
Tim Coulling, an analyst at Canalys, suggests IBM's tie-up with Apple to create business-focused apps also points the way towards tablets being used more commonly in the workplace.
"There are a lot of job functions where tablets make perfect sense–for service workers out in the field, for example, or point-of-sale devices in shops," he says.
The release of Windows 10 later this year may also drive demand. But, Coulling adds, the days of rapid growth may be over.
"The tablet market isn't going to crash, but we're reaching a plateau now that it's become saturated," he says. (BBC)
Statistics
Worldwide tablet sales
2010: 17.6 million
2011: 59.8 million
2012: 124.8 million
2013: 216.3 million
2014: 216.1 million
2015: 233.4 million (forecast)
2016: 259.0 million (forecast)
(source: Gartner)
Apple's iPads are the bestselling brand.
Between April 3, 2010, when the original went on sale, and December 27, 2014, the end of the Apple's last financial quarter, the US company sold 258 million iPads and more than 615 million iPhones.
(source: Apple)