The tablet market is expected to hit US$600 billion by 2026

Tablets were doing great less than a decade ago, but the arrival of large-screen smartphones started pushing this market sector towards annihilation. However, the tablet market is still afloat and — at least according to a forecast by Future Market Insights — it seems like a better future is in store for these products.

The aforementioned research document highlights the following reasons for the growth of the tablet sector:

• Many tablet designs to hit the market are water-resistant.
• Manufacturers' focus on delivering highly-functional pieces of hardware.
• Better acoustic performance in tablet devices.
• Improved compatibility with 4G LTE networks.
• Consumers demand of gesture recognition and human-centric capabilities.
• Enhanced multi-core processing and better battery life.

Although Future Market Insights predicts that Android slates will remain dominant, the aforementioned report also anticipates rising sales of Apple gadgets. If everything works as expected, tablets will rake in more than US$600 billion by the end of 2026 with a compound annual growth rate of 9.1 percent.

Unsurprisingly, China is expected to account for the largest share in the global tablet market, although North America and Europe are supposed to remain key areas for this sector in the coming years as well.