In July 2014 we posted a report titled "Best Buy CEO: Tablets Boomed and are now crashing." Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly sat down with Walt Mossberg in 2014 and one of the top topics on the table was tablets. He noted at that time that "tablets boomed and now are crashing. The volume has really gone down in the last several months." Yet on a positive note, Best Buy's CEO thought that the laptop has something of a revival because it's becoming more versatile. "So, with the two-in-ones, you have the opportunity to have both a tablet and laptop, and that's appealing to students in particular." Flash forward to today, and Hubert Joly said during Best Buys financial conference call that "Demand for tablets has been particularly weak; from an industry standpoint – there was a significant decline in that."

With Best Buy's CEO lacking specificity in his commentary on tablets, we just have to look back to Bloomberg's report after Apple's conference call on October 27 wherein they noted that Apple's iPad sales were down 20%, but that Microsoft's Surface sales were down over 23% –- so it's a category hit, not just an iPad hit.

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