There is no better sign of the decline of the tablet than its falling share of traffic on one of the world’s most popular websites. A website, surprisingly or not, that specializes in porn.
Tablets were supposed to be perfect for those relaxing moments when you weren’t at your desktop, but wanted to watch a video with a bigger screen than your phone offered. Yet according to the pornography site Pornhub, only 9% of US traffic and 14% of UK traffic came from tablets in 2018. This is the lowest share of tablet traffic for both countries since 2012. In both countries, tablet traffic peaked from around 2015.
This is very good data for assessing the state of the tablet. Pornhub is the world’s 3oth most popular website according to Alexa rankings. It’s more popular than Ebay and Craigslist, and not far behind Netflix. The US and UK are Pornhub’s two biggest sources of traffic.
An International Data Corporation report found that global tablet shipments fell to 36.4 million in the third quarter of 2018—a nearly 8% decline from a year before. The report notes that, increasingly, tablet sales correspond to sales in the desktop market. It suggests that many consumers now see the devices as interchangeable.
What happened? Increasingly, when people aren’t at their desktop they seem to be happy just using their phones. Larger screen sizes and improved resolution, seems to have obviated the need for a tablet for many people. Porn viewing (and really anything else you want to do on the internet) on phones is a substantially better experience now than it was five years ago. From 2013 to 2018, the share of mobile traffic to Pornhub increased from 40% to 72% globally. The trend happened in every country in which Pornhub receives significant traffic.