Tablets may be eating away at netbook sales

Tablet releases this year are booming, but it may be at such a large rate that netbook sales can begin to slow down as a result. The consulting firm and market researching company DisplaySearch is forecasting enormous momentum from the tablet sector based on the sheer number of parts and orders required to make the tablets from various companies. For example, an estimated 56 million tablets are expected to ship this year and by 2014, triple to 172.4 million units according to the report from DisplaySearch. This is roughly 35 percent of the mobile market that includes netbooks and notebooks as well, whereas tablets were only a dent on the total percentage of sales not too long ago.

There is no doubt that some tablet functionalities overlap those of a standard netbook, but whether or not consumers will favor tablets over netbooks to such a large degree as predicted by DisplaySearch remains to be seen.

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