Forrester jumped into the tablet sales prediction frenzy, which generally now indicates that the netbook was just a blip in PC history and forced into a market niche in the not too distant future. But then we know that we are dealing with a scenario that may be better left to Tarot and fortune tellers, especially if we see that some forecasts are likely to miss the actual result of 2010.
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The key word in those iPad and tablet sales forecasts is, of course, “may.” It appears to have become a must for analysts to predict the impact of the iPad and other tablets on the PC industry, while common sense suggests that it is way too early and there is not nearly enough data available to come to a reasonable conclusion. Your guess is as good as anyone else’s at this time.
Forrester may have published one of the more controversial tablet/netbook sales forecasts for the next five years. The company says that the PC market will grow by 52% over the next five years, that is of course, if the economy plays along and some unforeseen hiccup does not alter those numbers in an instant.
Forrester includes in its forecast desktops, notebooks and laptops, tablets, and netbooks. Tablets, the market research firm believes, “will go from a modest 3.5 million units in 2010 to 20.4 million units in 2015, a 42 percent compound annual growth rate.” Tablets will outsell netbooks beginning in 2012. By 2014, more consumers will use tablets than use netbooks. In 2015, tablets will constitute 23% of PC unit sales.
If you have followed recent reports and forecasts, those numbers will make you scratch your head and you may wonder what prompted Forrester to be so bullish about tablets while, at the same time, it predicts a substantial slowdown of tablet sales. In the end, Apple has sold 2 million tablets within two months and now it seems that Forrester believes that the entire tablet industry (provided we will see more tablets than the iPad in significant numbers on the market) will only sell a combined 1.5 million units in six months.
And how is it that, if tablets are growing at 42% every year, and end up at 20.4 million units in 2015, that they are outselling netbooks in 2012? Netbook sales forecasts from Gartner, IDC, ABI Research and DisplaySearch suggests that somewhere between 35-45 million netbooks will be sold this year, with a slight growth rate every year. 5 year forecasts may always be a bit difficult to support and if you are brave enough to provide such a report you may soon have to eat your own words: In March 2009, ABI predicted that netbook shipments would grow to 139 million by 2013. So whom do you believe? ABI or Forrester? That may very well depend on your personal preference and the company you are pitching to an investment firm.
“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,” said Forrester Research Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. “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.”
Forrester predicts that desktop sales will slide over the next five years, going from 18.7 million units sold in 2010 to 15.7 units in 2015. In that year, the US PC market will break down to 42% for notebooks, 23% for tablets, 18% for desktops and 17% for netbooks. There was no information whether netbooks sales volume would decrease over time. “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,” said Epps.
That is, of course, if you believe Forrester. If you believe other financial analysts, Apple alone may be selling up to 10 million iPads (a Morgan Stanley forecast) this year and not just 3.5 million.
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