SAN FRANCISCO, June 17 (Xinhua) -- Tablets including Apple's iPad are expected to outsell netbooks in the United States by 2012, research firm Forrester predicted in a report released on Thursday.
By 2014, more U.S. consumers will use tablets than use netbooks, or mini-notebooks, Forrester said in the report that outlined the trends in U.S. consumer personal computer (PC) market in the next five years.
As consumers adopt multiple PCs such as tablet to fit their lifestyle, PC sales as a whole in the United States will grow by nearly 52 percent in the next five years, with nearly half a billion desktops, notebooks, tablets and netbooks expected to be sold between now and 2015, the report projected.
Forrester believed that tablet will be an important factor to fuel the PC sales growth and shake up the PC market shares.
Tablet sales in the United States are expected to surge from a modest 3.5 million units in 2010 to 20.4 million units in 2015, a 42-percent compound annual growth rate.
By 2015, while full-size notebooks are projected to constitute the largest share of 42 percent in the U.S. consumer PC market, tablets are expected to emerge as the second largest category, making up 23 percent of PC unit sales, followed by desktops of 18 percent and netbooks of 17 percent.
"Tablet growth will come at the expense of netbooks, which have a similar grab-and-go media consumption and Web browsing use case as tablets but don't synchronize data across services like the iPad does," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in a statement.
"Consumers didn't ask for tablets. In fact, Forrester's data shows that the top features consumers say they want in a PC are a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad. But Apple is successfully teaching consumers to want this new device," she added.
The report noted that while desktop sales will drop over the next five years from 18.7 million units in 2010 to 15.7 units in 2015, their role should not be underestimated.
Desktops will remain an important segment, buoyed by consumers' desire for processing-heavy activities such as gaming and watching and editing HD and 3D video and graphics, according to the report.
"Product strategists should align their offerings to capitalize on these market shifts, with chipsets, displays, accessories, software and content that anticipate the growth of tablets and the continued relevance of traditional PCs," Epps said.
