Few iPad owners will be surprised at Forrester Research’s prediction that sales of iPads and other tablets will pass those of netbooks within two years. Forrester predicted that in just the US, 20.4 million tablets will be sold in 2015 compared with 3.5 million this year, a compound annual growth rate of 42%. Forrester said that by 2014, more people will use tablets than netbooks, and by 2015, tablets will make up 23% of all PC sales.
It’s the most optimistic tablet forecast we’ve seen from a market research company. However, several financial analysts and The Online Reporter have predicted that Apple alone will sell more this year than the 3.5 million that Forrester predicts.
“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 synchronize data across services like the iPad does,” Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said. “Consumers didn’t ask for tablets. In fact, Forrester’s data shows that the top features consumers say they want in a PC are a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad. But Apple is successfully teaching consumers to want this new device.”
Epps did not say but could have listed these major differences between an iPad and a netbook:
– Two clicks and two seconds to start using
– 10-hours between battery charges
– Tens of thousands of easily installed third party applications and games
– A touch-screen that’s intuitive for most users
– Local, walk-in tech support at stores that are mostly adequately staffed with trained people
– Lack of viruses and other malware
Forrester predicts sales of desktops will continue to decline over the next five years to 15.7 million units in 2015 from 18.7 million this year. Desktops, it said, will be needed for CPU-intensive tasks like playing games and watching and editing high-definition video. By 2015, it said, notebooks will account for 42% of the US PC market. Tablets will have 23%, desktops 18% and netbooks 17%.