dgstorm
Editor in Chief
The tablet market has been one of the fastest growing markets in the tech industry and Apple pioneered it. Analysts are predicting record numbers for iPad sales at the end of 2012. According to analyst Rob Chira, from Evencore Partners, the wonder tablet will ship up to 69 million units by the end of the year.
Not only is the iPad market expanding and conquering the competition at the speed of light, but it has already cast a shadow of darkness onto other devices including the venerable PC. Theories have emerged according to which the iPad will transform home desktop computers into a thing of the past. Shipping estimates for PCs stand proof of that and they are expected to drop 4% in the Q3 of 2012.
PC sales have declined with 0.1% globally but most significantly with 5.7% in the US in this quarter. On the other hand Apple’s desktop Mac line experienced a growth of over 4.3%.
"PCs now need to compete both directly/functionally and more so indirectly (for discretionary spend/mindshare) against 'thin client' architectures/ecosystems," Cihra stated in the note he wrote to investors.
Cihra seems to firmly believe that Apple will continue to stay on top of the tablet market regardless of pretty heavy competition from devices like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the just released Google Nexus 7. Microsoft also recently announced the launch of its own Windows 8 tablet nicknamed Surface that will be unleashed before year's end.
By Radu
Source: As PC sales stall, Apple projected to sell 69M iPads in 2012
