#Netbook Market to Fragment Due to #Apple #iPad

Netbook market to fragment after stellar year of 36.3 million shipped in 2009, and 58 million predicted for 2010, but now popularity of iPad will begin breaking down sub-notebook sales by region, with emerging markets (where notebooks are not widely used yet, like China) going with netbooks while established notebook markets will begin adopting tablets like the iPad. Look for every major computer maker to release an iPad look-alike over the next year. R.C.J.


Here is what ABI Research says: Starting in February, 2009, ABI Research forecast that approximately 35 million netbooks would ship into world markets in the course of the year. That estimate was viewed in some quarters as unrealistically high. However the final 2009 shipment numbers – 36.3 million netbooks shipped — have confirmed that the forecast was perhaps a little conservative. In 2010, netbook shipments are expected to reach 58 million while a new element has been added to the mobile consumer electronics market equation: the media tablet, initially personified by Apple’s iPad. How will mobile CE markets react to a “new kid on the block” so soon after the start of the netbook craze? At the same time, ABI Research sees the pace of netbook market growth slowing to a CAGR of 23 percent, as media tablets start to steal some netbook thunder. The firm’s new “Netbooks, MIDs, Media Tablets, and Mobile CE Market Data” conservatively forecasts media tablet sales of about eight million in 2010.
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