ABI Research expects to sell 4 million Tablet PCs this year

According to the market research firm, the real breakthrough will not be made this year.

As we’ve predicted in several news stories, this year will be for tablets. These machines will be very similar in their capabilities, regardless of the identity of the manufacturer. The display is between 5-11 ”, the number of pixels varies depending on the size, but due to the usually weak central units, the resolution of 1024 x 768 may be the ceiling. The machines will have wireless network access, but in more expensive designs, a 3,5G modem is not suspected to be a rarity either. Machines represent a whole new category among computers as they do not have a traditional keyboard. Their main task at the moment is to share, access, and play content, but depending on the operating system, we will be able to use them for some special corporate tasks.

ABI Research estimates that the number of units sold will reach 2015 million by 57. In our opinion, this does not mean a huge breakthrough, so it is a question of when the number of machines sold will reach the critical mass, which is then necessary for rapid spread and the right software. Since we are talking here about a device that only has a virtual keyboard, the user interface must also be special, and of course the ability to control with the finger is primary when controlling the programs written on them. The foundations were laid in all cases by Windows 7, and the next version of Windows is expected to bring further advances in multi-finger control.

As the primary area of ​​use is thought to be content sharing, the proliferation can be severely hampered by the relatively low wireless internet coverage in the world, and the lack of this greatly reduces the capabilities of machines.

For our part, we are curiously waiting to see what will come out of all this, since right now we might think that we don't really need such a device. Of course, the market doesn't work like that, the big manufacturers are able to make us believe that we need any useless device, so it may happen that in the next 2-3 years tablets will become "indispensable" in our lives. Of course, this also requires that the appropriate infrastructure be built and that we have adequate Internet access on buses and trams. Of course, it is a good question who will invest in this in our country. It is suspected that tablet manufacturers do not.