A new long-term estimate by Forrester Research has painted a strong picture for Apple in the tablet space. It saw Apple keeping its lead even up to 2016, when it saw the iPad having 53 percent of the space. A total of 760 million tablets would ship that year.
Microsoft's hopes of reclaiming the tablet space with Windows 8 may be overly optimistic, Forrester Research uncovered in a study Tuesday. Out of 1,810 Americans asked this summer, only 10 percent would consider a Windows 8 tablet if it were available now. The rank put it at the same level of interest as the ailing BlackBerry PlayBook and below the then-selling HP TouchPad at 16 percent.
Dell on Monday published a study it had conducted in hopes of steering companies away from tablets. The results, conducted by Forrester in February, had just eight percent of workers considering an iPad or Android tablet one of the two devices they'd want to have. A similar amount wanted a Windows tablet, but demand for smartphones and computers ranged from 41 percent to 59 percent.
Forrester Research CEO George Colony has placed a prediction that Apple's growth will continue to outpace that of rivals IBM and HP. The latter companies are expected to fall behind, in terms of yearly revenue, as early as 2013. Colony anticipates Apple's revenues to exceed $200 billion during the same period of time.
E-books are nearly a $1 billion business and should triple in size, Forrester said in a new forecast. The business should reach $966 million in e-books sold in 2010 alone and should triple to $3 billion in 2015. Book reading should be "forever altered" by that point, even if color e-paper and advancements to the books themselves don't take place, analyst James McQuivey said.
Demand for tablets like the iPad has reached the point where it's more popular than just about all other categories of device, Forrester discovered discovered in a research note put out late Thursday. As of June, 14 percent of shoppers online were planning to get an iPad or a similar tablet within a year where just eight percent expected to get a netbook. The demand was higher than for desktop computers (four percent), e-readers like the Kindle (11 percent) and even notebooks (13 percent).
