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Tablets 2.0 - This Time Think Bigger: Taking Bites out of Apple
Rethink Research, Oct 2010
We last did a forecast about tablets when most suppliers had version 1.0 of their tablet designs ready to launch, prior to the iPad. Once the iPad was out these designs have been thrown away and new designs put in their place.
In this report we can see far more clearly how the shape of the market will pan out and this time we have to say there’s a need to think bigger. Tablets are going to establish a permanent place in our personal digital lifestyles both at play and at work.
Right now there are just 25 device vendors out there offering tablets. By the end of 2011 that number will rise to over 200. A year later there will be a handful of dominant players in each of a number of categories.
Already we’ve seen a less than stellar quarter for iPad sales, only 28% up on its first quarter of sales at 4.2m units. This was due to new product launches from Samsung and Dell and pre-launch publicity for RIM, along with a host of low end copy-cat designs. There are more tablets on the way.
Apple’s share of the tablet market will fall to less than 40% during 2011 and by 2014 its share will have stabilized around 20%. That will still put it well ahead of other players, none of which we expect to have more than 10% share.
This is a different pattern from that of the handset market and the MP3 market.
One weakness of the iPad is the huge price differential between the 3G and non-3G versions. The additional bill of materials adds just $30 to the cost when the price is over $300 difference. The WiFi tablet was effectively subsidizes by the 3G version.
The Wi-Fi versions will dominate but eventually the Mi-Fi style cellular backhaul for Wi-Fi, creating a personal hotspot will make up a significant number of tablet connections. 4G tablets will become mainstream from about 2014 onwards
In the report we take a long look devices which are NOT media Tablets like the Apple and we see specialist devices emerging which have as subset of the iPad’s capabilities for industrial, home, enterprise and healthcare markets and emerging economies. We also look at the eReader market and find that it will continue to thrive, but in far lower numbers than tablets.
Media tablets grow mainly at the expense of netbooks, and will overtake netbooks in sales volume in 2012. Towards the end of this period there is some impact on smartphones, although these retain high growth rates and remain by far the largest mobile data category.
The critical pricing point for tablets to replace netbooks will be $200, and this will occur in late 2011 in the mainstream midrange, and earlier than that in some price sensitive niches.
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