Tablet computers on the world market

It is a well known fact that the laptop sales are going down, at the same time, the sale of tablet computers in on a rise. It has often been suggested that tablets will take over PC’s in 2013, and I find it very impressive how quickly it has happened. It has been less than 3 years since Apple jump-started a barely existent consumer tablet market. Now, the research firm NPD is claiming that tablet computers will out-ship laptops for the first time in history.

According to NPD, the number of tablets shipped in 2011 was roughly a third of the total number of laptops shipped but tablet shipments began to approach a 1:1 ratio to laptop shipments last year. The research firm sees that trend continuing—by 2017, NPD projects tablets representing nearly 75 percent of the combined global tablet-laptop market.

It is estimated that about 85 million tablets will ship in North America, for a 35 percent share of the global market, followed by China with 65 million units shipped, or a 27 percent share.
The big growth opportunity is in 7.9-inch tablets. Last year, the tablets of this size only took about 5 percent of the worldwide market, this was mainly due to the late release of the iPad Mini but in 2013, the 7.9-inch tablets are seen to be the new big thing on the world market and potentially capture as much as 20 percent of the consumer tablet market.
By 2017, the 7.9-inch tablets are expected to be the best selling ones, with more than a quarter of the overall market!

A handful of other tablet sizes—including 7-inch, 8.9-inch, 9.7-inch, 10.1-inch, and 11.6-inch—will each have between 8 to 17 percent of the tablet market in the coming years

During the last year, the smaller sized tablets like Google’s Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, were very popular, capturing about 27% of the overall market. However, it is projected that the smaller tablets will lose some of their popularity, resulting in going down to 12-13% share by the end of 2015 and staying like that for several years.

A few years ago, nobody was even predicting that tablets would become a significant product category, let alone overtake laptops by 2013. The success story of tablet computers has really been impressive, it has been about 3 years since Steve Jobs presented the first Apple iPad and started fascinating people with this brilliant new device.
Tablets used to be something that can be used in addition to PC’s, now they have become something that are just as good as PC’s and can be used to completely replace the good old computer.