NPD: Tablets To Overtake Notebooks By 2016 As The Most Popular Mobile ‘PC’
Tablets, and specifically the iPad from Apple, have been one of the big drivers for growth in mobile in the last couple of years, but figures out today from NPD indicate that their popularity is going to get even bigger …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple’s iPad had already been projected to give Apple a meaningful share of the wider PC market in 2011. By June 2012, iOS and Android had reached parity in the U.S. tablet market, alongside forecasts for rising tablet penetration and app spending.
NPD’s forecast reframes tablets from a fast-growing accessory category into the likely volume leader within mobile PCs, while identifying the iPad as a principal source of that growth.
First-order effects
- Apple gains third-party validation that the iPad is driving mobile-PC demand, strengthening its position in the category NPD expects to outgrow notebooks.
- NPD’s forecast raises the strategic stakes for notebook vendors: tablet demand is no longer peripheral to the portable-computing market they serve.
Second-order effects
- The iOS–Android split becomes more consequential for developers and app distributors, because a larger tablet installed base expands the value of each platform’s application ecosystem.
- Notebook makers face pressure to distinguish products where keyboards, software compatibility, or other capabilities matter rather than competing only on portability.
Third-order effects
- If NPD’s projection holds, “PC” market share will increasingly depend on tablet ecosystems and software distribution, not just notebook shipments.
- The mobile-computing market is moving toward category convergence, with tablets absorbing more of the volume once associated with traditional portable PCs.
The trend: Tablets are shifting from a companion device into a core measure of PC-market scale, making platform ecosystems central to competition for mobile computing users.