Over 400 Million Tablets Sold Annually by 2017

There are lots of factors at work here, but it seems that the most prevalent performance mobile computing device will be the tablet. This won’t happen in the next 18 to 24 months; however, by 2016, tablets will outsell notebooks.

Some think that smartphones will prevail, but the thing is that the most powerful smartphones out on the market today are considerably more expensive than the Android-powered tablets featuring similar hardware computing power.

The fact that most quad-core smartphones cost over $400 and many tablets that feature the same quad-core processors manifest the same computing power for less than $200 is a strong price/performance advantage tipping the scales towards tablets.

NPD DisplaySearch reportedly made a study on the sales evolution of different PC market segments, and PC shipments will grow from 348 million units sold in 2012 to over 809 million units in 2017.

On the other hand, tablets sales will increase four-fold to 416 million units five years from now.

Many casual and light notebook users will migrate towards tablets once they see that most of their daily activities are perfectly suited on a tablet, while the purchase cost of the device is by far smaller, and the physical comfort of carrying and using the device is greater.

Notebook sales will also increase, but unlike many so-called experts believed, they won’t surpass total PC sales.

The increase in notebook shipments will stand at a high 393 million units in 2017, compared to the 208 million units currently shipping.

As a matter of fact, tablets and notebooks together will “only” occupy less than 40% of the end-user computing market, but that’s an impressive evolution in itself.

Via: Over 400 Million Tablets Sold Annually by 2017