Tablet sales flat; can operators help with better data sharing plans or subsidies?

Worldwide PC ships fell below expectations during the second quarter, increasing less than 3% year-over-year, according to IDC and Gartner — neither of which includes tablet sales in their PC tallies.

PC vendors are adjusting to a reality in which tablets are increasingly the object of consumers' purchasing interests and their route to the Internet. (An April AdMob study found that tablet owners were using their tablets more than their desktops or even their televisions.) Are carriers not adjusting as well?

While smartphones are being subsidized to the point of potentially breaking the bottom line of smaller players (CP: AT&T's flexible device subsidies could be a nail in Sprint's coffin), 3G and 4G tablets aren't. Most tablets are subsidized very little, if at all, by mobile operators – yet cost more in part due to the expense of radio chip sets, etc. They also sport a much higher total cost of ownership once monthly 3G/4G fees are included.

Consequently, it's the less-expensive, WiFi-only models that are selling.

"Hundreds of thousands" of 3G tablets are sitting on warehouse shelves, since "nobody wants to pay for that data," IDG analyst Bob O'Donnell told ComputerWorld in a July 11 report.

O'Donnell's suggestion is that carriers allow subscribers to "spend" their data plan across more than one device — as Verizon is likely to do with its new tiered data plans (CP: Verizon's new tiered smartphone plans may normalize data charges across all devices.)

The second option is pure cash-in-the-consumer-pocket: could increasing device subsidies also help to move those 3G and even 4G tablets off of shelves? Some people think so. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily news are planning to pilot a program offering deeply discounted Android tablets, in hopes of raising online reader numbers and learning about consumer behavior, AdWeek reported July 11.

Carriers (and tablet vendors) will want to be paying attention to whether the plan succeeds.

Tablet vendors that count on the telco channel for distribution, IDC has reported, "will face serious challenges."