IDC predicts big growth for tablet market

May 26, 2010 — 9:39am ET | By Ron Miller

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While Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) may be the first out of the gate with its iPad, it will soon have lots of company in the tablet market--a market that is expected to ship 7.6 million units in 2010 alone. IDC is predicting this will grow to 46 million units shipped by 2014. This is still a much smaller market than the portable PC market, which is expected to ship 398 million units by 2014, but still one that is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 57.4 percent.

Susan Kevorkian, an IDC analyst who helped write the report says, Apple created the category and she believes it will lead the way. "IDC doesn't forecast market share, but we expect Apple, which effectively created the media tablet category, to remain the market leader during the forecast period. As it has with the iPod and iPhone, we expect Apple to introduce cutting-edge hardware and software features in iPad that set the bar for the rest of the market," she said.

She believes, however, there is room for competitors in the tablet market. "There are opportunities today for vendors to compete based on what iPad doesn't offer, such as Flash support, a video camera, video outputs, USB connectivity, and/or printer support," Kevorkian said.

Kevorkian says that while Apple is out there alone right now, she says, based on conversations with component, device and software vendors, many competing devices are on the way. "For example, we expect Nvidia Tegra2-based media tablets supporting Android to become available later this year, and PC and CE vendors are looking closely at the media tablet category,"she said.

It's clear the tablet market is going to grow and content producers need to take this new footprint into account when creating content and applications.

For more information:
- see the IDC press release