WebBuilding

Devices and hardware

iPad and tablets

Summary

A tablet is a flat, touchscreen computer larger than a phone and usually without a built-in keyboard. Apple announced the iPad on January 27, 2010, and put it on sale in the United States on April 3, 2010; Google released Android 3.0, a version optimized for tablets, in 2011. For web design, tablets sit between phones and desktop computers: since iPadOS in 2019, Safari on iPad asks for desktop websites and presents itself to sites as a Mac. As of September 2026, StatCounter counted tablets at 1.76% of web page views worldwide and 2.42% in the United States.

Web Building Encyclopedia · Devices and hardware · Last reviewed October 22, 2026 · 9 min read

What a tablet is

A tablet is a flat computer that is mostly screen. It is larger than a phone, it is controlled by touch or a pen, and it usually has no keyboard of its own. Web statistics treat it as its own class of device: StatCounter, a web analytics company, splits page views into desktop, mobile and tablet.1

For anyone building a website, the tablet matters because it sits in between. Its screen is wider than a phone’s and smaller than most monitors, and it is used with fingers, which cannot hover the way a mouse pointer can. Since 2019, Safari on the iPad has even presented itself to websites as a Mac.2

Pen computers came first. On November 7, 2002, Microsoft and its partners launched Tablet PCs running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. They took input from a digital pen as well as a keyboard or mouse, and extensions for Office XP brought handwritten digital ink into programs such as Word and Outlook.3 Nine manufacturers showed shipping hardware that day, among them Acer, Fujitsu, HP, Toshiba and ViewSonic, and Matsushita announced plans to build a Tablet PC under its Panasonic brand.3 They ran a version of Windows XP, so the web browser on them was a desktop browser showing the desktop web.

The iPad, 2010

Apple announced the iPad on January 27, 2010. It had a 9.7-inch touchscreen, was half an inch thick, weighed 1.5 pounds and was rated for up to 10 hours of battery life,4 a figure Apple’s specifications give for surfing the web over Wi-Fi.5 Apple’s announcement described web surfing on it as “dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer.”4 Prices in the United States started at $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi model and went up to $829 for a 64GB model with 3G mobile data.4

The screen was 1024 by 768 pixels at 132 pixels per inch (ppi), the measure of how tightly pixels are packed.5 The iPhone entry explains how Apple’s Safari browser fitted desktop pages onto a much smaller screen with a virtual viewport and the viewport meta tag.

The Wi-Fi models of the iPad went on sale on Saturday, April 3, 2010, from 9 a.m. at all 221 Apple retail stores in the United States and at most Best Buy stores.6 Two days later Apple said it had sold more than 300,000 iPads by midnight that Saturday, counting pre-orders and deliveries to resellers, and that buyers had downloaded more than one million apps and more than 250,000 ebooks on the first day.7

Like the iPhone, the iPad got its apps from the App Store.7 Its browser laid out websites in a viewport that was the same on every iPad size, Apple’s engineers said later, until iPadOS changed it in 2019.2 Pages built for a mouse met a screen without one: a menu that opened only when a pointer hovered over it had no pointer to respond to.

Some of the desktop web never reached the iPad at all. Apple’s WebKit team wrote in July 2017 that the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch had never supported Adobe Flash, a browser plug-in, an add-on program that runs content the browser cannot run by itself.8 The end of Adobe Flash entry covers how the plug-in was retired.

Android tablets and other makers

Google’s answer came with Android 3.0, known as Honeycomb. Google described it as a version of Android “specifically optimized for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.”9 The full software development kit for Android 3.0 became available to developers on February 22, 2011, with final interfaces at API level 11.10

The Honeycomb browser was built for the bigger screen. Tabs replaced separate browser windows, a new incognito mode allowed private browsing, and Google promised better browsing of sites not made for phones through an improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling and support for fixed positioning, a CSS technique for keeping elements such as headers in place while a page scrolls.9 Touch input with several fingers at once also became available to JavaScript.9 The phone side of the platform is covered in Android smartphones.

Many companies now make Android tablets. StatCounter’s count of tablet page views by maker for September 2026 put Samsung second to Apple, followed by Amazon, Xiaomi and Lenovo.11 A site’s tablet visitors therefore arrive on devices from several makers, not only on iPads.

Designing for the middle screen

Tablets created a design problem that phones alone had not. A layout can be built for a narrow phone or a wide monitor, but a tablet held upright and the same tablet turned sideways are two more widths again. Responsive web design, one page whose layout adapts to the width of the screen, is the approach Apple itself recommends for the iPad.2 The Ethan Marcotte entry covers where the idea came from. The history of screen widths on desktops is covered in computer monitors and screen sizes.

Sharper screens

On March 7, 2012, Apple announced a new iPad with what it called a Retina display: 3.1 million pixels, four times as many as the iPad 2, and, Apple said, more than one million more than an HD television.12 The Wi-Fi models shipped on March 16, 2012.12 An image made for the older pixel count has to be stretched over four times as many pixels on such a screen, so a site that wants sharp pictures on it has to supply larger image files.

Screens kept growing. On September 9, 2015, Apple announced the iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch Retina display of 5.6 million pixels, at $799 for the 32GB Wi-Fi model.13 Apple also announced the Apple Pencil, a stylus sold separately for $99 that measures pressure and tilt, with both due in November.13

Touch, hover and the pointer

The biggest practical change for designers is touch. A mouse pointer can rest over a link without clicking it, and many desktop menus open on that hover. A finger cannot do this. The CSS hover media feature, part of the CSS media queries specification, lets a style sheet ask whether the main input device can hover conveniently. MDN, Mozilla’s developer reference, gives as an example of an input that cannot the many mobile devices that imitate a hover only after an inconvenient long tap.14

The iPad later gained a pointer of its own. On March 18, 2020, Apple announced that iPadOS 13.4, due on March 24, would bring trackpad support to the iPad for the first time, working with Apple’s mouse and trackpad, its new Magic Keyboard and other Bluetooth or USB mice.15 The pointer appears as a circle that highlights items on screen.15 One iPad can therefore be used with a finger, a pen, a keyboard and a trackpad on the same visit, so a page cannot assume that hovering is either always or never available.

iPadOS and desktop-class browsing

On June 3, 2019, Apple announced iPadOS, a version of its mobile software named for the iPad. It said Safari would now automatically show the desktop version of a website, scaled for the iPad’s screen, and named Google Docs, Squarespace and WordPress as web apps that would work well.16 iPadOS was due that fall as a free update for the iPad Air 2 and later, every iPad Pro, the fifth-generation iPad and later, and the iPad mini 4 and later.16

Safari 13, released on September 19, 2019, put this into practice. Its release notes say Safari for iPad shows the same desktop websites as Safari for macOS, with the same capabilities.17 The same release added support for Pointer Events, a standard way for pages to handle mouse, trackpad, touch and Apple Pencil input through one set of events, better support for hardware keyboards, and Media Source Extensions, which let a page’s scripts feed video to the browser’s player.17

Apple’s engineers explained the change at its developer conference in a session titled “Introducing Desktop-class Browsing on iPad.” In it, Apple’s Charles Ying said: “iPad will now present itself to websites as a Mac.”2 That goes beyond the browser’s user agent, the line of text a browser sends to identify itself: the presenters described it as a set of deeper changes to WebKit, the engine behind Safari.2 The Apple Macintosh entry covers Safari on the Mac.

Several effects follow for websites:

  • Device detection stops working. A site that looks for “iPad” in the user agent to send a separate tablet or mobile site will not find it. Apple’s advice was to use feature detection, testing for the features a page needs, rather than reading the user agent.2
  • The viewport matches the screen. The viewport is the area a browser lays a page out in. Before iPadOS it was the same on every iPad size; from iPadOS it matches each iPad’s screen, so larger models get more room and smaller ones are scaled to fit with text enlarged for reading.2
  • The viewport tag is a promise. The HTML viewport meta tag with width=device-width tells the browser the page reflows to fit any width. Apple said iPadOS would ignore that tag on pages that make the promise but then lay out wider than the screen.2 Safari 13’s notes describe the same change: such pages are scaled down to avoid sideways scrolling, and text is resized to stay readable.17
  • Split View changes widths. An iPad can show two apps side by side, so a page may be drawn in part of the screen. Apple’s presenters gave this as one reason why knowing that a page is on an iPad tells a developer little.2

Apple’s recommendation to web developers at the session was to build one responsive website instead of separate desktop and mobile sites.2 Sites that kept a separate mobile version found that iPads now received the desktop one.16

Tablets in web traffic today

Tablets are a small share of web use compared with phones and computers. StatCounter’s figures for September 2026 are:

Platform (September 2026)WorldwideUnited States
Mobile58.99%49.1%
Desktop39.26%48.47%
Tablet1.76%2.42%

Sources for the table: platform shares worldwide1 and in the United States.18 Among tablet page views worldwide, the system StatCounter labels iOS, which covers iPads, had 50.35% and Android 49.57%, with all other systems at 0.08%.19 By maker, Apple had 50.34%, Samsung 25.7%, Amazon 8.89%, Xiaomi 3.12% and Lenovo 2.07%, with 4.44% from devices StatCounter could not identify.11

These numbers measure page views, not devices sold, and they depend on how each visit is classified. Because Safari on iPad presents itself to websites as a Mac, a tool that sorts visitors only by the user agent text can mistake such an iPad for a desktop computer, since Apple’s change was designed to make it look like one to websites.2 Tablet figures from any analytics service, including a site’s own, are best read with that in mind.

Timeline

  1. StatCounter counts tablets at 1.76% of page views worldwide and 2.42% in the United States1
  2. Apple announces trackpad and mouse support for iPadOS 13.4, due March 2415
  3. Safari 13 brings desktop-class browsing and Pointer Events to iPad17
  4. Apple announces iPadOS, which shows the desktop version of websites by default16
  5. Apple announces the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and Apple Pencil13
  6. Apple announces an iPad with a 3.1-million-pixel Retina display12
  7. Google releases the final Android 3.0 SDK, a version optimized for tablets10
  8. Apple says it sold more than 300,000 iPads on the first day7
  9. The iPad goes on sale in the United States6
  10. Apple announces the iPad4
  11. Pen-based Tablet PCs running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition arrive from nine makers3

What it means for your website

Tablets brought 2.42% of page views in the United States in September 2026, by StatCounter’s count, against 49.1% for phones and 48.47% for desktop computers.18 That is a small slice, but tablet visitors use the same layouts as everyone else, and an iPad may be counted as a desktop.2 A few checks cover most of what matters.

  • Use one responsive layout. Apple’s own advice for the iPad is a single responsive site, not separate desktop and mobile versions.2 Most modern themes and builders already work this way. See responsive design.
  • Keep the viewport tag honest. The tag width=device-width, which MDN gives as the recommended setting, tells the browser your page fits any width.20 If something on the page, such as a wide table or a fixed-width banner, forces it wider than the screen, iPadOS scales the whole page down.217
  • Test at tablet widths, both ways round. Check your pages on an iPad, or a browser window of similar size, held upright and sideways, and in Split View, where your site may get only part of the screen.2
  • Do not hide things behind hover. Menus or prices that appear only when a mouse hovers will not open for a finger. Many touch devices can imitate a hover only with an awkward long tap, and the same iPad may also have a trackpad, so make every hover item reachable with a tap.1415
  • Do not block zooming. Setting user-scalable=no stops people with low vision from enlarging the page, and MDN notes that WCAG requires at least 2x scaling.20
  • Do not sniff for “iPad”. Since iPadOS arrived in 2019, Safari on iPad presents itself to websites as a Mac, so plugins or scripts that send tablets to a mobile site by reading the user agent will miss it.2
  • Supply sharp images. Apple’s Retina iPad of 2012 had four times the pixels of the iPad 2, and later models have more, so small, low-resolution logos and photos look soft on them.1213

Most website builders handle the layout for you, but you still choose the images and menus. Our guide to choosing a website builder covers what each one lets you change, and websites and SEO explains how mobile layouts affect search, a subject the mobile-first indexing entry covers in depth.

See also

References

  1. Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide (September 2026). StatCounter Global Stats. 2026-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  2. Introducing Desktop-class Browsing on iPad (WWDC19 session 203). Apple Developer. 2019-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
  3. Windows XP-Based Tablet PCs Arrive With Broad Industry Support. Microsoft News. 2002-11-07. accessed October 22, 2026.
  4. Apple Launches iPad. Apple Newsroom. 2010-01-27. accessed October 22, 2026.
  5. iPad – Technical Specifications. Apple Support. accessed October 22, 2026.
  6. iPad Arrives This Saturday. Apple Newsroom. 2010-03-29. accessed October 22, 2026.
  7. Apple Sells Over 300,000 iPads First Day. Apple Newsroom. 2010-04-05. accessed October 22, 2026.
  8. Adobe Announces Flash Distribution and Updates to End. Apple's WebKit Team, WebKit blog. 2017-07-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  9. Android 3.0 Platform Highlights. Android Developers, Google. accessed October 22, 2026.
  10. Final Android 3.0 Platform and Updated SDK Tools. Android Developers Blog, Google. 2011-02-22. accessed October 22, 2026.
  11. Tablet Vendor Market Share Worldwide (September 2026). StatCounter Global Stats. 2026-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  12. Apple Launches New iPad. Apple Newsroom. 2012-03-07. accessed October 22, 2026.
  13. Apple Introduces iPad Pro Featuring Epic 12.9-inch Retina Display. Apple Newsroom. 2015-09-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  14. hover CSS media feature. MDN Web Docs, Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  15. Apple unveils new iPad Pro with breakthrough LiDAR Scanner and brings trackpad support to iPadOS. Apple Newsroom. 2020-03-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  16. The new iPadOS powers unique experiences designed for iPad. Apple Newsroom. 2019-06-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  17. Safari 13 Release Notes. Apple Developer Documentation. 2019-09-19. accessed October 22, 2026.
  18. Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share United States of America (September 2026). StatCounter Global Stats. 2026-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  19. Tablet Operating System Market Share Worldwide (September 2026). StatCounter Global Stats. 2026-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  20. <meta name="viewport">. MDN Web Docs, Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].