Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2012/07/03/tablets_to_outship_notebooks_in_2016/

Tablets to outship laptops in 2016 SHOCK

Ultrabooks encouraging sales - but not enough to beat the 'pads

By Tony Smith

Posted in Personal Tech, 3rd July 2012 14:49 GMT

More tablet market bullishness, this time from research company NPD DisplaySearch. World+Dog will buy more tablets than notebooks from 2016 onwards.

Still, DisplaySearch isn't as bullish as Microsoft, which last week said it expects the market to definitively favour tablets over notebooks in 2013.

Then, some 715m mobile computers will ship, up from the 374m DisplaySearch reckcons will ship in 2012. Of the latter, 208m units will be notebooks. By 2016, that figure will have risen to 397m, an overall increase of 90.9 per cent.

Tablets, however, will have ramped up from 121m units to 403m, and increase of 233.1 per cent.

So much for the Ultrabook "revolution".

Established and emerging markets alike will increasingly favour tablets, but growth will be higher in the former, DisplaySearch said.

Emerging markets may prove the saviour of the netbook, a category already in decline and, according to DisplaySearch's forecast, due to fall to near zero shipments - well, fewer than 3m worldwide - in 2016… before reviving again to just over 3m units in 2017. ®