World will stay hungry for tablet PCs The Western world will continue to lead demand for tablets over the next six years, with growth driven by ever higher screen resolutions. Market watcher NPD DisplaySearch said today it expects tablet shipments to jump from 72.7m in 2011 to 119.60m this year before reaching 220.45m in 2014 and 328.32m in 2016. During that time …
I assume that all these devices are touch-screen displays. It's all well and good producing higher res screens, but there's a limit to how useful the screens are if we're stuck with addressing them with ever-pudgier fingers (relatively speaking). Should parents-to-be plan on reviving the ancient art of bonsai digitry in the next five years?
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What the world is really waiting for is an increased supply of 4:3 panels and the existing resolution will do just fine thanks. Asus have admitted privately that they won't ship a tablet in the same format as the iPad because Apple is using most of the available supply of 4:3 panels. Viewsonic do have the VIewpad 10e, but that's because they make their own panels. Unfortunately they have aimed the 10e at the bottom of the market, either because they are afraid of lawsuits from Apple, or because they have misread where the demand lies.
I can't see higher resolution screens driving much growth (although there will be growth anyway), I suspect most of the initial buyers will be people who already own an iPad 2 and further sales will be to people who buy for reasons other than the screen resolution. How about a tablet aimed specifically at digital camera owners with a full size SD slot and that could double as a digital photo frame - now that really would grow the market.
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