As the tablet market slows, mobile computing is gravitating toward devices that can convert from a tablet to a laptop and back again.

Apple CEO Tim Cook once compared a tablet-laptop combo to mashing up a refrigerator with a toaster. The resulting Frankenstein device would do an equally lousy job of chilling your food and warming it up. That was three years ago.

Today, these tablet-laptop hybrids -- which blend the mobility and touchscreen friendliness of a tablet with the capabilities of a PC -- are on track to becoming the fastest-growing computing category. Shipments of so-called 2-in-1 devices like Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 and the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, for example, are expected to grow almost fivefold this year. That's thanks in part to attachable or foldable keyboards and more-powerful hardware, such as Intel's Core M microprocessors, that let slimmer, tabletlike devices hit speeds on par with midrange laptops.

And tablet sales? The market for large slabs of glass that are used mostly for playing games, reading email and watching videos has begun to slide. Sales of slate-style tablets are expected to fall 8 percent, according to a report from research firm Strategy Analytics. Sales in Apple's iPad business, meanwhile, fell 18 percent year over year in its most recent quarter, the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.

Consumers can't seem to get enough of devices that let them have, and do, it all.

"I feel like this took about three years," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "You now have very high quality 2-in-1s that are very thin, affordable -- and people haven't upgraded their notebook for a while."

Rumors are swirling that Apple this fall will introduce an even larger premium iPad, dubbed the iPad Pro, with a nearly 13-inch screen. That would pit the Pro directly against 2-in-1s and standard laptops.

Apple has already introduced features in its annual software update, called iOS 9, that will let its larger screen devices perform some of the heavy lifting of laptops, like running two apps side-by-side. The new version is scheduled for release sometime next month.

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Hmmm, should i assume that the demand for phablet sized mibile devices is the cause of the decline in tablet sales or, consumers are not willing to part with their conventional PCs?