Tim Cook says tablets likely to overtake PC sales

Tablets like the iPad are growing rapidly enough that they could be more popular than PCs, Apple COO Tim Cook told Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope after a recent interview. Recounting a meeting that also included CFO Peter Oppenheimer and retail Senior VP Ron Johnson, Shope was told that there was "no reason why the tablet market shouldn't eclipse the PC market over the next several years." The prediction helped lead analyst to estimate Apple would ship 8.1 million iPads in the spring, or nearly three quarters more than the 3.3 million Apple shipped in the tablet's inaugural season.

The prediction may be realistic as Apple is commonly predicted to be shipping over 40 million iPads in a market with 60 million or more. The total PC market shipped about 83.2 million PCs this quarter and should go significantly above 300 million for the year but has been in a slight contraction compared to 2010. IDC research has put a conservative ceiling on tablets and expected ARM to peak at 13 percent of computers in 2015 despite Apple's use of it in the iPad and its presence in virtually every other modern mobile device.

Tablets, so far dominated by iPads, have been unusually successful at cannibalizing regular notebooks and may have been directly responsible for Microsoft's division posting a rare loss at the start of the year. Microsoft has been concerned enough about the field to implement a tablet-focused Windows 8 interface and expects the designs to play a much larger role in its sales next year.

Side-by-side with the iPad-focused discussion was mention that the iPhone had passed 200 carriers worldwide and was matched by strong performance in retail sales.

By Electronista Staff