All the data is pointing to a killer year-or few years-for media tablets, with Apple, Samsung, Motorola and RIM expected to lead the market.
Apple,
Motorola, Samsung and other vendors are fueling a trend that will mark 2011 as
a "tipping point" for tablet sales, consultancy Deloitte said in a Jan. 18
report, echoing findings released the same day by research firm IDC and
investment firm Raymond James. By all accounts, tablet shipments are headed
skyward.
The worldwide
media tablet market reached 4.8 million units in the third quarter of 2010, up
55 from the previous quarter and 45.1 percent from the third quarter of 2009,
IDC reported. Setting the standard, Apple shipped nearly 4.2 million iPads
during the third quarter, claiming 87.4 percent of the worldwide market share.
(While considerable, this was lower than Strategy Analytics' Nov. 2 estimate,
which gave 95.5 percent of the market to Apple.)
IDC expects
tablet growth to "accelerate significantly" during the first quarter of 2011,
as new products from high-end vendors come to market. Among these will be the
Motorola Xoom, based on Google's tablet-friendly Android 3.0 operating system
(known as "Honeycomb") and Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook, running
RIM's BlackBerry Tablet OS.
"The media tablet
market's rapid evolution will continue to accelerate [during the fourth quarter
of 2010] and beyond with new product and service introductions, channel
expansion, price competition and experimentation with new-use cases among
consumers and enterprises," Susan Kevorkian, IDC's research director of mobile-connected
devices, said in a statement.
Deloitte also
pointed to enterprises as a contributor to increased tablet sales.
"Although some
commentators view tablets as underpowered media-consumption toys suitable only
for consumers ... in 2011, more than 25 percent of all tablet computers will be
bought by enterprises, and that figure is likely to rise in 2012 and beyond,"
Deloitte said in its annual sector forecast, according to Reuters.
Deloitte added
that health care and retail markets alone could account for sales of 5 million
tablets this year, with total 2011 tablet sales expected to reach 50 million
units.
IDC similarly
estimated sales of 44.6 million units for the year-with U.S. sales accounting
for 40 percent of the total-and rising to 70.8 million units in 2012.
Raymond James
analysts, offering a spreadsheet that investors can use to keep track of the
dozens of tablet competitors headed to market (at January's 2011 Consumer
Electronics Show, Hewlett-Packard Executive Vice President Todd Bradley put the
number of tablets on display at 96), said they believe a
few companies are particularly well-positioned for success. They include HP,
Motorola, RIM and Samsung.
Motorola, set
for a first-quarter launch, according to a source, "could initially ship as
many as 1 million units," accelerated, in part, by the Honeycomb OS, wrote
Raymond James analyst Brian Alexander. Enhancements to the OS, Alexander
noted, appear to include "improved Web browsing ... Google e-books, improved
Gmail layout, redesigned YouTube interface, video chat and 3-D maps to name a
few."
Additionally,
Raymond James analysts expect Apple's iOS to be a near-term leader, but for
Android to ultimately lead in market share. Still, it has high hopes for two
non-Android users.
At its planned
Feb. 9 event, HP is expected to introduce a number of smartphones and tablets
running WebOS (a netbook is also rumored to be included), and to outline its "connected devices vision,"
of which WebOS will be at the heart.
"We view WebOS
as a very competitive operating system and believe that HP's brand name,
expansive customer base and world-class supply chain position the company for
success in the tablet market," wrote Alexander. Raymond James expects Apple to
address the iPad's "shortcomings"-boosting its processor and memory, including
a camera, etc.-in the next generation of the device, he adds. "We view the
Samsung Galaxy Tab (upgraded to LTE [Long-Term Evolution] connectivity),
BlackBerry PlayBook and Motorola Zoom as the tablets best positioned to compete
with the iPad."
Also expected
to benefit from the growing tablet market, according to Raymond James analysts,
are flash memory vendor SanDisk; chip vendors Micron, Nvidia and Atmel; and camera
maker OmniVision.
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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