Maybe if the camera on the phone could be used as a projector, it would be much better than a tablet. But for now, smartphone screen size is limiting what can be done, so people buy tablets as well. But, when 5 and 6 inch phones become normal, that may change.

Tablets are ok and will be ok for a while. Smartphones only problem against tablets is that the phones come with smaller screen where browsing and watching movies is not fun. Going around with a laptop is burdensome compared to tablets.

Tablets may not take the place of laptops, but surely can take the place of netbooks.

Oh yeah, sure, just a fad.

Just like nobody would want a smartphone without a keyboard, how could anybody want a PC without one?

Here's a fun graph:

http://twitter.yfrog.com/mn3oebp

And a nice analyst report:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/07/apple-pc-market-share-canalys/

In case you aren't going to bother looking at that last link: Apple shipped more tablets last quarter than any single PC vendor shipped desktops + laptops.

All the successful tablets are derived from smartphone tech, so if smartphones were going to kill tablets, tablets would hardly have gotten off the ground. Meanwhile in PC land, the netbook form factor is toast, OEMs like HP and Dell are heading for the hills, and Microsoft is betting its monopoly on tablet computing. You don't gamble with a monopoly unless you know it's under imminent threat.

Don't believe Microsoft is gambling? In just this past year, they released Windows with the most radical UI redesign since the GUI was introduced in the '80s, they've broken their marriage to Intel and the x86 architecture, and they've antagonized PC OEMs by launching their own computer line.

That's not a fad, that's a disruptive steamroller. Personal computing of five years from now is going to be dramatically different from personal computing of five years ago.

Remind me again, how a cell phone ends up providing the needed screen width to be able to view documents?

As for the PC route,remind me again how a normal laptop provides the portability and lightness a tablet does?

Now, if you want to say that the future will be some sort of hybrid between a laptop and a tablet, with the strengths of both, then you have something.  But, I have to seriously doubt you arguing that tablets will just go away.  The thing now is that there isn't much in the way of application breakthroughs that require more than what we have now with current technology.

The thing is that most people don't need desktop PCs for what they are doing.

Good luck trying to read documents and get a decent web surfing experience using a smart phone.  They aren't useless.  Tablets are filling the niche as a device for reading content that will phase out the likes of books and other print media.  They are superior to smart phones in regards to this feature and documents.  If you can't see this, well oh well... They sell for reasons.  If I had my druthers, I have a dumb phone for calling and a tablet for reading documents and getting on the web.

i dont have a desktop Pc, just laptop.

But tablets are for what ? Facebook and internet ? Thats enough for most people though :D

and i have a Smartphone, i hate opening PDFs or even Office documents on it, its so small :c i rather 11000x times my Laptop :D

Though not amazing clarity yet flexible screens have already been created, imagine an iphone with a screen all the way around if that phone was able to flip open like the hard back of a book that would make a half decent size screen.
My point being one way or another it would not surprise me to see a phone-tablet hybrid in the future that will become popular and eat into tablets sales like the op says

Many people feel that tablets will get rid of Laptops. They will do this by continually upgrading them until they reach the level of performance that is possible on a Laptop.

Samsung has this already.   128GB Slate Tablets with Windows 8, capable of running games like Diablo 3 on it.

PC's will never be extinct, I'm sorry, but 18 years of using a mouse, is not enough to get me to want a touch screen computer, especially a laptop, last thing I want is it to be ruined by fingerprints or scratches from negligent kids or people that don't know how to take care of their stuff.

iPods and iPad's give a unique experience, much like Android, they are both different operating systems from PC's, incorporated into phones makes perfect sense.   Will it be a 3DS or Vita killer?   Absolutely not!   Even the Wii U has successfully incorporated touch screen gameplay into their eighth generation console in a way that's not obcessive.

Both Android and iOS have devices capable of hooking up to a big screen TV, eventually, both the iPhone and Android phones will be able to produce pictures at 1080p, then the next breakthrough will be doing it at 2160p(4k), phones and tablets will always be behind the big screen tv's, although the ipod has a better resolution than current big screen TV's.

Tablets will always be a little ahead of cellphone technology on purpose, so consumers have a reason to buy them.   When it will become scary is when these games run as well on them as well as PC's

I dunno..........if you just want to surf the net and listen to music, play the occasional time waster game, a tablet is way better then any laptop, mainly for its portability.

Laptops are now becoming a student/businessman thing. Hybrid laptops are a wildcard.