Keep taking the tablets

New research published in the International Journal of Technology Management, shows how people make the technology transition from one type of device to another following a period of using both classes of device in parallel. For example, many users have a personal computer as well as a tablet computer, but at some point a lot of those people will abandon the PC in favor of the more portable and agile tablet, foregoing some of the benefits of a PC that may well have become legacy features once they are fully embedded in the tablet realm.

Rahul Thakurta of the Xavier University Bhubaneswar and Anamitra Basu Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) both in Bhubaneswar, India, and Nils Urbach of the University of Bayreuth, Germany, have looked at the motivation for technology transition in their two countries.

The team has observed a behavioral phenomenon as analyzed using social psychology where many users have made a complete transition at least for private, as opposed to business use, of a tablet over PC or laptop. Of course, there are hybrid devices, such as touchscreen laptops that can be separated into screen and base so that the screen becomes a standalone tablet without a physical keyboard for ease of portability in some circumstances.

"Our model was able to explain roughly 58% variance in desire towards transition in Germany, and about 50% variance in desire towards transition in India, which are considered significant. These results establish the importance of the different antecedents in understanding technology transition at an individual level," the team writes.