subject: The Big Story At Ces This Year Is Tablets [print this page] Just like last time around the big story at CES this year is tablets, but there's more than one reason to think this might really be the tablet's big year.
Forrester Research says tablet sales could double in 2011, to 24.11 million units, and estimates that by 2015, 82 million consumers-or one-third of U.S. users-will have a tablet. A Deutsche Bank analyst estimates Apple iPad sales alone could exceed 28 million units. While Apple hasn't announced its fourth quarter 2010 sales yet the company did say that in the third quarter of 2010 it sold 4.19 million iPads.
Rumor Mill
All of this news just sets the stage for a field that will be in flux throughout the year. A new Apple iPad is expected in just a few months, and Android's Honeycomb-centric tablet coming by summer per the rumor mill. At the CES show this week, we're expecting to see a deluge of tablets running everything from Windows 7 to Android, and even a handful of Linux-based models. We also have news today that HP will be hosting a WebOS event in February, and rumors put the RIM PlayBook tablet shipping date sometime in March.
As my colleague Jared Newman noted not all of the tablets shown this week will be winners. In fact, that's the one thing that's a safe bet. Already, plenty of tablets are for sale from respectable vendor names, vaguely named companies selling factory-direct from China, and even from vendors touting tablets as e-readers and multipurpose devices. Of those, only the Samsung Galaxy Tab has really made a mark as a possible competitor to Apple's iPad.
The integration of software and hardware to provide a consumer experience is what has traditionally set Apple apart from the rest of the crowd. This week we're sure to see more comers trying to do the same.
