ABI Research and iSuppli certainly agree on one factor: Everyone loves the iPad, and OEMs copying the touch-sensitive tablet form factor are following along in its wake. Some of the research results released in mid-July fall into the “well, duh” category, but associated apocryphal tales are occasionally disturbing. The iPad and tablet lookalikes make great readers and Web browsers, but why are some corporate IT departments canceling all laptop orders in favor of universal standardization on the iPad? The soft keypad has not yet shown itself to be a useful tool for document creation.
But I digress. First, ABI has increased its estimate for tablet computers shipped within 2010 by almost a factor of three, predicting that 11 million units will be shipped within this calendar year. That number will be more heavily skewed to iPad than originally anticipated, ABI said, because of the delay of some competitors’ products. In fact, Principal Analyst Jeff Orr said that the onus was on competitors to get products out by September, in order to have significant numbers ship in the fourth quarter.
Nevertheless, ABI has not revised its long-term growth estimates significantly. Orr stressed that the tablet market still falls short of a mass market, and may not achieve that status until 2013. But ABI is betting that the Mobile Internet Device sector, a market definition that usually includes smartbooks, could be negatively affected both by iPad and tablet popularity, and by the growing functionality of smartphones.
This week, iSuppli Corp. hit us with a double-whammy. On Tuesday, the research firm released a report that was even more bullish on tablets than ABI, predicting that Apple alone would ship 12.4 million iPads by the end of the current calendar year, and that its current 84 percent market share in tablet computing was unlikely to erode very much through 2012. Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at iSuppli, called the iPad the “Tickle Me Elmo” product for the coming holiday season, and that Apple likely would be limited only by production capacity. In fact, Alexander warned that Apple had to be careful to keep quality-control concerns on top – a factor underscored by the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco.
As if that wasn’t enough to give tablet-clone OEMs pause, iSuppli followed this report up a day later with a forecast that Apple would become the world’s second-biggest OEM semiconductor purchaser in 2011, and could move into first place by 2012. Min-Sun Moon, senior analyst for semiconductor spending and design at iSuppli, said that Hewlett-Packard would remain in first with $17.1 billion in projected chip spending in 2011. Apple would leapfrog ahead of Samsung, since iSuppli projected Apple would spend $16.2 billion compared to Samsung’s $13.9 billion.
Moon said that Apple’s increase could be attributed equally to iPad and iPhone 4, two products with such high growth curves that Apple could move to Number One chip purchaser in 2012, unless HP underwent a merger or major acquisition. The next highest chip purchasers after Samsung, projected for 2011, are Lenovo Group, SanDisk, Research In Motion, Cisco Systems (RIM ahead of Cisco?!), and Acer. Tablet-clone friends, read the numbers and weep.
Loring
