Tablet Shipments to Leap 200 Percent This Year, Says DisplaySearch

The momentum for tablets promised at CES will translate to shipments of 55.7 million units in 2011, a 200 percent year-over-year jump, DisplaySearch said. The growth rate will drop over the next few years, but tablets’ share of the mobile PC market, also made up of notebooks and netbooks, will grow to nearly 35 percent, 172.4 million units, by 2014, said a report by the research firm. Mobile PC shipments are expected to reach 503.8 million units by 2014.

Market segmentation will be driven by screen size, according to the report, which said 7-inch widescreen and 10-inch standard and widescreen models will be dominant among new LCD products. Apple upset the apple cart for tablet footprints when it launched the iPad in a 4:3 aspect ratio last year, according to the report, which noted that notebooks, monitors and TVs had been moving to widescreen aspect ratios. The iPad’s success “has sparked debate about the best display format,” along with screen size, for tablets, and the outcome will “help define the category,” it said. New widescreen devices for 2011, “which continue to flood the supply chain,” are marketed as “more user-friendly” because of a footprint that’s wider or longer, depending on orientation.

Tablets’ effect on PC sales will be felt most in markets with high household PC penetration, and so will vary by region, the report said. In emerging markets, cannibalization is expected to be negligible, because PC penetration rates are lower than in mature markets, and because consumers tend to want more features in the first computers they buy, it said.

DisplaySearch forecast double-digit growth through 2014 in the mobile PC category. Growth is expected to peak at 30.4 percent year-over-year in 2011 and slow to 17.7 percent in 2014, it said.