Origin Acoustics is shipping on-wall docking stations for the iPad and iPad mini to support their use as control devices for home automation systems. The tablets are charged through the docks’ built-in power supply, said the company. The docks support all iPad models, except for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, said Origin.

Amazon began taking preorders for its updated Fire tablet line Wednesday, keeping to its sub-$100 pricing strategy for the 7- and 8-inch models. The next-generation Fire 7, with an improved 7-inch IPS display, longer battery life (eight hours’ mixed use) and better Wi-Fi connectivity, remains at $49, said Amazon. The Fire HD 8, with 12 hours’ battery life and an HD display, will sell for $79, Amazon said. The Fire 7 has 8 GB storage (16 GB, $69), expandable to 256 via microSD card, and the HD 8 has 16 GB internal storage, also expandable to 256 GB with external storage, Amazon said. Both tablets have Alexa support, screen-sharing tech support and Blue Shade, which removes blue light for a better nighttime reading experience, the company said. It also introduced the Fire 7 Kids Edition tablet ($99) and Fire HD 8 Kids Edition ($129) tablets, which include a year of free FreeTime Unlimited content. All new Fire tablets will begin shipping June 7, it said.

Tablets' decline continued in Q1, as shipments fell 8.5 percent to 36.2 million, for the 10th consecutive quarterly drop for the category, said a Thursday IDC report. Slate tablets, without a keyboard, are in “steep decline” after a shipment peak in 2014, while detachable tablets with a “first-party” keyboard, saw shipments rise, said IDC. The tablet market's growth from 2010 to 2013 was "unlike many other consumer-oriented device markets we've seen before,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith, but the consumer refresh rate stalled due to increased dependency on smartphones and “minimal technology and form factor progression." While experiencing its 13th consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment decline, category leader Apple is “not immune to the changing dynamics of industry and consumer demand,” which IDC said is partly due to success of its other product lines. Apple shipped 8.9 million iPads in Q1, led by the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, vs. 10.3 million in the year-ago quarter. Samsung remained in the second spot with shipments of 6 million, roughly flat with Q1 2016 shipments, and Huawei (2.7 million units), Amazon (2.2 million) and Lenovo (2.1 million) rounded out the top five. Like Samsung, Huawei has slowly migrated its tablet portfolio from an exclusively Android slate tablet lineup to a mix of Windows-based detachable devices, said the research firm.

Lenovo incorporated Immersion’s TouchSense technology in its Lenovo A12 2-in-1 Android tablet, said Immersion Wednesday. The tablet’s virtual keyboard includes vibration and sound-effect dual feedback and adds double linear vibration to give a tactile sensation of typing on a standard keyboard, said Immersion.

Barnes & Noble recalled 147,000 power adapters sold with the Nook Tablet 7 due to a shock hazard, said a Wednesday notice from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The adapter’s casing can break when plugged into an electrical outlet, said the company, which received four reports of the power adapter breaking or pulling apart and exposing the metal prongs. No injuries were reported. Markings on the adapter are model number TPA-95A050100UU and manufacture date 201610; the affected Nook's model number is BNTV450. The tablets were sold at Barnes & Noble stores and online from November 2016 to January 2017 for about $50. Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled adapters and register online for a free replacement unit and a $5 gift card, B&N said. The bookseller didn’t name the tablet manufacturer or respond to questions, but the website said the Nook Tablet 7 has been pulled from stores. Barnes & Noble is “working quickly” to replace recalled adapters and get them in the hands of owners and packaged with the Nook Tablet 7s in inventory, it said, and expects to resume sales mid-month. The website lists four other Nook tablets for sale -- all Samsung Galaxy Tab Nook devices, none of which was affected by the recall, Barnes & Noble said. On a November earnings call (see 1611220063), Barnes & Noble CEO Leonard Riggio said the non-Samsung-branded 7-inch tablet will “feed our content business and with virtually zero risk.” Barnes & Noble has no technology exposure or capital investment in the Nook Tablet 7 and is “working with technology partners” that are manufacturing the devices “to our specs,” Riggio said. He hoped the company would sell out of the low-end tablet during the holidays.

The California Public Utilities Commission will loan Apple iPads to people with speech disabilities, under an 18-month pilot launched Wednesday, the CPUC said in a news release. The Voice Options project will provide iPads with speech apps through short- and long-term loans at 10 demo centers across the state, CPUC said. Users enter what they want to say into the app and then it’s played over the iPad’s speakers, it said. Individuals may borrow an iPad for 30 days to test the app, then apply for a long-term loan, CPUC said. Long-term loans require verification of disability status by a designated professional, it said.

Worldwide tablet shipments will likely drop by 12 percent this year, to 182.3 million shipments, IDC reported. The researcher expects the tablet market to rebound in 2018, but growth will be in the low single digits as detachable tablets gain traction. Thin and light designs combined with a touch screen are driving growth in detachables while also “bleeding over” into the PC market as slim and convertible notebooks become more popular, said analyst Jitesh Ubrani Thursday. The trend is a “welcome change for vendors” with average selling prices for notebooks and tablets projected to rise near term, Ubrani said. Mature markets will experience positive single-digit growth until 2020, with the decline in slate tablets offset by growth in detachables, said IDC. Slate tablets will remain “relevant,” said analyst Jean Philippe Bouchard, citing Amazon’s Kindle Fire portfolio, but the “transition to detachables is inevitable.” Slate tablets will have twice the volume of the detachable segment, with 124 million units projected to ship in 2020, he said. Small tablets (7-9 inches) will hold 56.4 percent market share this year, down from 59.9 percent in 2015, falling to 39.7 percent in 2020, said IDC. Medium 9-13-inch tablets, with 39.8 percent share last year, will grow to 43.1 percent this year, and to 58.2 percent in 2020, said the forecast. Large tablets over 13 inches hold a minor share at 0.5 percent in 2016 projections, edging up to 2.1 percent by 2020, it said.

As Apple quietly made pricing changes to the iPad line Wednesday while next-gen iPhone and Watch launches took the spotlight (see 1609070057), Amazon capitalized on the lull in tablet news to begin taking preorders for its latest Fire HD tablet. The 8-inch Fire HD 8 is refreshed with Alexa integration, double the storage (16 or 32 GB) and faster performance, with a starting price of $89, said a news release. Additional HD 8 features: Dolby Audio through stereo speakers, microSD storage expansion to 200 GB and 12 hours’ battery life, said Amazon. The HD 8 will ship Sept. 21 and Alexa voice control will be available on the latest Fire HD 8, Fire HD 10, Fire and last year’s Fire HD 8 tablets via a free over-the-air software update in coming months, Amazon said.

Tablets will continue their slump through the rest of 2016 but are poised to return to growth in 2018, as detachable tablets continue to steal share from traditional PCs, said an IDC report Tuesday. Tablet shipments will decline 11.5 percent overall this year to 183.4 million units, an all-time low growth rate, said the research firm, but forecasts call for 194.2 million shipments in 2020. The commercial segment will be key to growth of detachable tablets, said IDC. Windows and iOS already are positioned solidly with detachable tablets, and with the latest version of Android, "Google will also have a horse in the race as they finally offer better multitasking support and added security features,” said IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani. IDC sees a shift to larger devices during the forecast period. In 2016, 55 percent of all tablets will be 9 inches or smaller, but that share will drop to 40 percent by 2020, said IDC. "We see smaller slate tablets being offered at very aggressive price points, leaving little room for revenues outside of a pure volume or platform play like for Amazon for instance," said analyst Jean Philippe Bouchard. Price pressure and more demand for larger screen sizes and detachable tablets will push manufacturers to grow their portfolios, he said. Slate tablets will continue to be most shipments through 2020, shrinking from 85 percent of tablets shipped this year to 68 percent by 2020, it said. Most slates will ship in emerging markets where consumers “seek out any low cost computing device,” it said. Android will hold 66.2 percent tablet market share this year, dropping to 57.8 percent in 2020, said IDC, while Windows’ share increases from 11.3 percent to 19.3 percent for the period. Apple tablet share, meanwhile, will remain relatively flat from 22.4 percent share this year to 22.9 percent in 2020, said IDC.

Q2 global tablet shipments fell 8 percent year on year to 46.7 million units, Strategy Analytics said in a Friday report. That average selling prices climbed 9 percent during the same period was proof that consumers and enterprises are buying more pro slate models like the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 “than ever before,” said the research firm. Q2 was the 10th straight quarter of year-on-year shipment declines for the iPad, “but some light is now visible at the end of the tunnel” because Apple “is riding consumer and enterprise demand for 2-in-1s with multiple price tiers of buy-in to its vision of what a converged computing device can achieve,” it said. Apple shipped 10 million iPads in Q2, a 9 percent year-on-year decline and a 3 percent decrease from Q1, it said. But Q2 was the first full quarter of iPad Pro 9.7 sales, which helped drive ASPs to $490 and contributed to the best quarter Apple has had in two years, it said. Android-branded vendors shipped 30.1 million in Q2, a 15 percent decline from a year earlier and flat sequentially with Q1, it said.