In the US, staring in 2012, tablets will outsell netbooksm and by 2014, more consumers will use tablets than netbooks, says a Forrester Research report.According to the report, fueeled by a growing interest in tablet computers, nearly half a billion PCs will be sold to consumers in the US between now and 2015.
Over the next five years, PC unit sales across all form factors-desktops, notebooks and laptops, tablets, and netbooks- will increase by 52 per cent.Data in the report is based on Forrester’s five year forecast for the personal computing and eReader markets in the US.
Despite an ongoing industry debate about how to define tablets, Forrester believes these should be classified as a form of personal computer.Tablet sales in the US will go from a modest 3.5 million units in 2010 to 20.4 million units in 2015- a 42 per cent compound annual growth rate.In 2015,tablets will constitute 23 percent of PC unit sales.
“Tablet growth will come at the expense of netbooks, which have a similar grab-and-go media consumption and Web browsing use case as tablets but don’t synchronise data across services like the iPad does”, said Sarah Rotman Epps, analyst, Forrester Research.
