A new forecast has predicted that tablet shipments will overtake that of portable PCs this year, and the entire PC market by 2015.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) said according to its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, shipments of tablets would grow 58.7 per cent year over year in 2013, reaching 229.3 million units.
This was up from 144.5 million units last year, and this would exceed the shipments of portable PCs, as the market was expected to see a decline for the second consecutive year, of 7.8 per cent.
IDC said tablet shipments were expected to outstrip the entire PC market, including portable and desktop PCs combined, by 2015.
IDC mobility trackers program manager Ryan Reith said tablets passing portable PCs and then all PCs, showed a significant change in consumer attitudes about computing devices, and the ecosystems which drove the.
“What started as a sign of tough economic times has quickly shifted to a change in the global computing paradigm with mobile being the primary benefactor.”
While IDC believed PCs still had a role to play in this new era, particularly among business users, for many consumers, a tablet was a simple solution for use cases previously addressed by the PC.
This year, the worldwide average selling price for tablets was expected to decline 10.8 per cent, to $US381, thanks to a market growth fuelled by low cost Android devices. IDC expected tablet prices to decline more, allowing the sale of a viable computing experience into more people’s hands at price points the PC industry has tried to achieve for years.
Screen size had also seen a shift in the market, with the explosion of the under eight inch screen tablet category to overtake the larger screen size categories in total shipments, IDC said.