The advent of tablet POS systems has dramatically changed the point of sale market in the past decade. From restaurants to boutiques, tablets have found their way into a variety of commercial environments.
Tablets are small, sleek, and sexy. They're also small and mobile, so if space is a limitation or you need to carry around your POS system, then tablets can be very beneficial hardware to have.
Tablets were designed for consumer applications and can take a beating in commercial environments. Imagine a bartender punching in an order with an empty beer bottle in hand during happy hour. Tablets can also have limited internet connectivity and depend on WiFi or a cellular signal. Most tablets also lack horsepower and offer inferior processors to larger computers.
Not necessarily. Tablets definitely have their place, but we don't envision traditional terminals becoming obsolete any time soon. In addition to tablets themselves, there's also an entire sub-industry of tablet-based software platforms — but that's an entirely different Q&A session.
As mentioned, we don't support the replacement of traditional POS terminals with tablets for the sake of looking cool. Instead, we recommend using tablets to augment your current operations. We've sold tablets for numerous situations, but below are the most common scenarios where we see tablets add value:
We estimate that 80 percent of the customers and prospects that call asking about tablets actually don't get one. Most of the time, when we ask why someone wants a tablet POS, they really can't put forth a legitimate business reason beyond the appearance. Once we actually walk through the business scenario, most people decide against tablets.