According to a new forecast by NPD DisplaySearch, shipments of touchscreen tablets, led by Apple’s market-dominating iPad, will surpass traditional notebooks by the year 2016. In its report, the generic term “tablets” was used with the iPad being the only one singled out.
Apple’s iPad currently dominates the tablet market and is expected to account for more than 60% of all tablets shipped in 2012, with an even higher share of actual sales to customers. NPD’s report didn’t offer any breakdown of how much the tablet market it expects the iPad to control in 2016 but the company’s “Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report” expects that tablet shipments will grow from 121 million units in 2012 to 416 million by 2017. In the same five-
year time frame, the projection indicates notebook shipments to increase from 208 million to 393 million.
Senior analyst, Richard Shim, at NPD DisplaySearch had the following to say:
Consumer preference for mobile computing devices is shifting from notebook to tablet PCs, particularly in mature markets. While the lines between tablet and notebook PCs are blurring, we expect mature markets to be the primary regions for tablet PC adoption. New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets. Services and infrastructure needed to create compelling new usage models are often better established in mature markets.
Source: NPD DisplaySearch
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