Tablets Continue Seeing Market Growth

Where desktops used to reign supreme, mobile PCs are becoming the new norm when it comes to adoption rates. The mobile PC market is actually so strong right now that new industry analysis says that adoption is expected to grow from 367.6 million units shipped in 2012 to 762.7 million by the end of 2017. This growth in the mobile PC market has allowed companies that are having problems selling the more traditional PCs to move into the mobile PC market and flourish there in a very big way.

“The mobile PC industry is undergoing significant change this year,” said Richard Shim, senior analyst with NPD DisplaySearch. “The rapid rise and establishment of white box tablet PCs (tablets made by small local brands, mainly in China) is putting pressure on traditional notebook PCs. These low-cost tablets are reaching further into emerging regions where notebook PC penetration rates have remained low, resulting in cannibalization by tablet PCs.”

Tablets are expected to only continue to grow at a rather fast rate, 67 percent year over year. That growth rate will allow sales numbers to reach 579.4 million units shipped by the end of 2017. Currently there are expected to be 256.5 million units shipped by the end of 2013.

Notebook PCs, on the other hand, are going to continue to struggle as tablets take their place in the market. The latest forecast expects notebook sales to decline at a rate of about 10 percent over the next four years. One aspect that could keep them from dying out completely will be adding touch capability. That rather small section of the market is expected to actually see a 48 percent increase in units shipped through 2017.

Touch-capacitive notebook computers might be getting more popular, but that appears to be in spite of operating systems like Windows 8. That OS has so far had a limited impact on the market as a whole.