A new mobile PC report from TrendForce has forecast that the decline of tablet shipments will continue into 2016.

According to TrendForce, the sustained dip comes courtesy of soft consumer demand driven by a general lack of tablet features that can pique customer interest and the devices’ limited functionality. Following 2015’s forecasted year over year decline of 14.9 percent, tablet shipments are expected to continue to drop 6.1 percent year over year in 2016, the report said.

TrendForce estimates that 163.4 million tablets will be shipped for the full year 2015.

“Business products such as Apple’s iPad Pro have high unit prices, so they will not be able to offset the decline in small tablet shipments even if they do become a market success,” TrendForce analyst Anita Wang said. “Our estimation indicates that a total of 153.4 million tablets will be shipped in 2016.”

As the prevalence of large smartphones above five inches continues to eat away at tablet sales – particularly those in the seven inch range – TrendForce expects that tablet vendors will begin introducing larger products that can compete with notebooks.

In 2016, tablets 10 inches or larger are predicted to account for nearly 30 percent of the global tablet market, up from an estimated 18 percent this year.

Evidence of this trend, the report said, is already apparent in the release of the new 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro, the 18.4-inch Samsung galaxy View and the 12.3-inch Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

The biggest hurdle tablets will have to overcome in competing with notebooks is price, the report said.

“The latest tablets from Microsoft and Apple clearly compete against notebooks, but they are limited to the business/professional market segment,” Wang said. “It will be difficult for large tablets to replace notebooks in short term because the former are priced too high, whereas low-priced notebooks are plentiful.”