CES 2010: Apple's impending tablet will face a tough and fragmented market, industry figures suggest.
Apple's impending tablet release will be one of the most-watched gadgets of 2010, but one market watcher suggests that its impact may be more Apple TV than iPod.
"There's been a lot of talk about a Tablet 2.0 re-emerging," Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), remarked at a media briefing at CES 2010 in Las Vegas today. "You're going to see that entire ecosystem coming together."
DuBravac conspicuously refrained from mentioning Apple by name -- the company isn't a participant at CES, which is hosted by the CEA -- but it seems unlikely he'd have devoted so much of his discussion of future market trends to the tablet space if the Apple rumours weren't brewing so furiously.
Tablet devices like Apple's upcoming beast play into a segment of the gadget market -- devices that are between 5 and 15 inches in screen size -- that's currently largely occupied by netbooks and e-readers. nothing between mobile phones and notebooks. "We now see a battle taking place in that space," DuBravac said. "Both have very different business models. This is also where that tablet 2.0 market will emerge."
Above: Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)
The CEA infamously dropped the ball on analysing the netbook market last year, but has since started tracking the category in detail. Netbook sales in the US doubled in 2009 and are expected to do the same this year, DuBravac said. E-reader sales are also expected to double in 2010.
User research by the CEA suggests that web browsing and reading email is the overwhelming use of netbooks by consumers. Only 53% use netbooks to view documents, and just 44% to view video online. Perhaps more surprsingly, just 46% use them for accessing social networking sites.
"Those figures have implications for how successful a tablet category could be," DuBravac said. "One of the big complaints against a tablet is that it's not pocketable, but if your primary use is in the living room or the bedroom, pocketable is not a requirement."
However, the technology expectations within the category may increase rapidly. "With netbooks, we're going to see a plethora of offerings. We've already seen a lot of splintering from this category. As we look at netbooks, we find that consumers really want all the features of a notebook with the price of a netbook," DuBravac said.
If the tablet market does re-emerge, then projections will need to be adjusted. "If we were to see a tablet 2.0 market, that would impact the growth projections for both notebooks and ebooks," he said.
DuBravac also pointed out that any new technology generally takes time to spread from early adopters. "A lot of these categories we have been talking a lot about -- it takes several years before they start to move up their adoption cycle."