Despite the growing popularity of Apple Inc’s iPad tablet computers around the world, the tablets launched by rival companies are uncompetitive and make less of an impression on consumers, HSBC said in its latest report.
Researchers led by Jenny Lai (賴惠娟) at HSBC Securities (Taiwan) Co (匯豐證券) said the brokerage cut its global shipment forecast on non-iPad tablets by half for this year, adding that PCs also face stronger cannibalization at the hands tablets.
HSBC said it was raising its iPad forecast to 45 million this year, up 13 percent from its previous forecast, which would lift Apple’s tablet market share to 82 percent.
However, “we have lowered our tablet forecast for 2011 from 60 million units to 55 million as we are halving our estimate for non-iPad tablets to 10 million,” HSBC said in an e-mailed statement yesterday, citing the report dubbed “Apple’s golden harvest: No end in sight” issued on Thursday.
“Potential weak demand could lead to an inventory glut of non-iPads,” it added
Companies worldwide including Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, as well as Hewllet-Packard Co and Motorola Inc of the US and Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd have launched their tablets in recent months to compete with the iconic iPad as they all try to gain a foothold in the fast-growing market.
While more than 100 tablets from over 60 manufacturers have been launched in the past few months, HSBC said they were relatively uncompetitive with the iPad because non-iPad tablets are generally “heavier, thicker than the iPad2 without any price advantages.”
“In the second half [of the year], we expect these ‘iPadversaries’ to fight for the non-Apple scraps, leading to a margin-sapping battle on price,” Lai wrote in the report.
HSBC also said in the report that the market has generally underestimated the seriousness of the cannibalization that tablets would have on PC sales.
The brokerage’s warning echoed a revised forecast made by the Taipei-based researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) on Thursday that global notebook computer shipments were expected to fall by 6.6 percent to 208 million units this year from 222.7 million units it forecast in November last year.
The cannibalization by tablets would increase the likelihood that the corporate PC replacement cycle would be more moderate than expected, HSBC said, adding that its new forecast of an 8 percent growth in global PC shipments this year was at the low end of consensus.
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