Since the launch of Apple Inc’s iPad, the rapidly growing popularity of tablet computers will make them the third-largest mobile device segment by next year, behind only smartphones and notetbook computers, a Digitimes Research report said.
The success of the iPad, which sold 7.46 million units in the April-to-September period, has energized the market for tablet computers, Joanne Chien (簡佩萍), senior analyst and director of Digitimes Research, said in an e-mail statement on Thursday last week.
The strong demand, Chien said, indicated that global shipments of tablets could exceed those of netbooks — a smaller model of the notebook computer and currently No. 3 in the mobile device category — in the final quarter of this year and for all of next year.
The report said that the electronics industry would rather see tablet devices as an extension of smartphones in terms of product architecture, business model, use mode and consumer behavior, as opposed to an expansion of notebook computers.
Therefore, prospects for tablets will depend on the market demand of smartphones, even though there are expectations that tablets will eat into netbook sales, the report said.
Global shipments of tablet devices will reach 12.28 million units before the end of this year, grow by 183 percent to 34.81 million units next year and then rise an additional 45.7 percent to 50 million units in 2012, according to a study by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) released on Thursday.
That number will grow to an estimated 100 million units in 2013, only trailing behind smartphones (800 million units) and notebooks (300 million units) in the mobile device segment, Chien said.
MIC senior analyst Tai Hung-chun (戴鴻鈞) agreed that the emergence of the iPad has established a solid market for similar products and he also expected tablet demand to surge in the next three years.
MIC said North America remained the largest market of tablet devices for the time being, with Apple’s iPad dominating the market in the competition with Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook electronic readers.
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