Apple to dominate tablet biz, PC market for years
Fondleslabs more popular than notebooks by 2016
Apple took a greater share of the tablet market during Q1 and, in a remarkable turnaround, will continue to do so through 2013, market watcher NPD DisplaySearch believes.
The exceptionally bullish DisplaySearch even reckons more tablets will ship in 2016 than notebooks.
Thus far the consensus has been that Apple's market share would inevitably decline. Yes, it would continue to sell more iPads than ever before, but booming sales of Android devices would nonetheless dampen Apple's dominance.
Source: DisplaySearch
Last year, Apple took around 60 per cent of the tablet market. This year, it'll be back up to 72.1 per cent, DisplaySearch's numbers show.
Android, by contrast will fall, from 35.6 per cent to 24.7 per cent. Windows, in all its forms, already available and yet to ship, will appear on less than three per cent of the tablets that ship in 2012, RIM's PlayBook OS on even fewer machines.
From 2013 onwards, Apple's tablet share will decline, though by 2017 it will still command a share of more than 50 per cent. By then, Android will have recovered its growth spurt and grabbed 40.5 per cent of the market. The ARM-coded Windows RT will have 7.5 per cent of the market by then. Other forms of Windows and PlayBook OS will argue over the remaining 1.1 per cent.
Source: DisplaySearch
Shipments of tablets will grow from 81.6m units in 2011 to 424.9m in 2017, DisplaySearch said and upped the forecast for 2013 from 168.9m to 184.2m.
"This forecast estimates that in 2016 more tablet PCs will be shipped than notebook PCs," it said. ®
COMMENTS
2013
Nobody can predict 2013 shares, never mind beyond. Windows RT and Windows 8 may prove appealing. Android 5 may be a compelling product. iPad 4 may bring a breath of fresh air into the iPad space. Or any or all of these may be a disappointment.
Utter nonsense.
"This forecast estimates that in 2016 more tablet PCs will be shipped than notebook PCs,"
I'd bet against that.
My tablet cost almost as much as my notebook. If I want to make notes in meeting, I need a proper keyboard - the touch screens methods simply aren't fast or reliable enough. If I need a proper keyboard, I might as well take the notebook instead of the tablet. Then there's the tablet's lack of processing power/memory/storage and the tablet apps being baby versions of what I have on the notebook. The tablet is fine for reading documents and emails, web browsing and the like but whenever I need to do some real work, I go back to the notebook or the desktop system and the tablet tends to be gathering dust.
The big three need to take the bull by the balls
I think the big three (HP, Dell, Lenovo) and maybe even the big 5 (fill in the rest) need to realize that Microsoft isn't going to help them compete against Apple, and do they really trust Google with Android ? Now if you look at the Linux desktop, its not looking so bad anymore. So why don't these three commit resources to some form of Linux desktop (my favorite is KDE). Ten or Twenty milion dollars would buy a lot of full time developers for a Linux Desktop (Throw in another ten mill to get a first rate office suit).
Yeh sounds kind of crazy, but no more crazy then riding shot gun with Microsoft at the wheel driving you to oblivion.
android on x86/64
Personally I think Google could crush Apple & Microsoft in the consumer market by dropping Chrome OS & releasing Android for PC's
