With the growing popularity of tablets, one wonders if the familiar site of someone unfolding a laptop and perfectly positioning it upon a Starbucks table will soon be a thing of the past. Tablets are increasingly outselling laptops and the proof is apparent everywhere.

On my latest trip to the grocery store, there were several children riding in carts, busily occupied by their mother’s (or perhaps their own) tablet. Tablets were also a popular Christmas gift, with many areas across the country running completely out of stock! If one can gauge the popularity of a product by the fact that their grandmother has or wants one, then tablets are in the lead.

One company, In-Touch, makes tablets designed by seniors just for seniors. Their company mission was to make a tablet “that was not scary, complicated or hard-to-see.” Once grandma and grandpa are coming aboard, it’s safe to say that the product is pervasive. Just like the play in the Bard’s day, the tablets are the thing.

Digitimes recently forecasted that the sales of tablets will grow 38.3% this year, topping laptop shipments for the first time ever. It also expects Apple to be the top vendor, falling only by about 5%. Expected to grow like wildfire this year is the Android tablet. A quick review of ebay offerings shows Android tablets available from a variety of sellers, in every sales price, from every part of the country. Even discount stores like Big Lots advertise Android tablets in their Sunday circulars, though typically not in huge bulk, alongside cleaning mops and lawn furniture.

The tech site Singularity Hub recently remarked about how quickly the tablet gained on, then overtook, the laptop. Their research indicates that originally tech-experts thought the tablet-takeover would occur in 2016. Spurring it on, they say, was “due in part to iPad competitors entering the space along with more available screen sizes.”

It appears that the tablet has arrived. Gone is the laptop era. Who knows if Starbucks will ever be the same.

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