Computer buyers will together acquire some 10m Small, Cheap Computers and handheld net browsers this year, but five years from now the total will have rocketed to 200m.

So claims market watcher ABI Research, which reckons that volume of demand will value the market for these devices at $27bn come 2013.

Interestingly, while the market is now dominated by netbooks - around 9m of that 10m total are SCCs - by 2013, the balance will have shifted to favour MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). Five years from now, 68 per cent of ultra-mobile devices sold will be MIDs.

That's 136m units, but some 64m SCCs will be bought in 2013 - more than six times the number acquired in 2008.

Amazingly, that 200m total is also the number of laptops ABI forecasts will be sold in 2013, indicating ultra-mobile devices will quickly become as popular as notebooks.

Laptop sales are forecast next year to exceed desktop sales for the first time ever. If SCCs and MIDs come to match laptop sales so quickly, they're clearly going to be outselling desktops soon, and probably surpassing laptops not long after 2013.

ABI's data comes on the day UK grocer Tesco claimed laptops were flying off its shelves as "an average of one per minute" as parents kit out their kids for the new school term and the upcoming commencement of the academic year.

Tesco said laptop sales it its stores were 160 per cent up on last year's total.

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