Netbooks vs Tablets: For Whom The Bell Tolls?

While the analysis has laptops maintaining their dominance over tablets until at least 2017, the same can't be said for netbooks.

ABIresearch has just published figures clearly confirming this trend. While the arrival of tablets hasn't yet eaten into the laptop market as much as some were predicting, netbooks truly are suffering.

According to ABI, in the second quarter of 2011 tablet sales exploded to the detriment of netbooks. In this period, 7.3 million netbooks were sold compared to 13.6 million tablets! The iPad 2 certainly contributed to this jump in sales: 68% of tablets sold in the second quarter of 2011 were Apple models. According to Jeff Orr who heads up ABIresearch, the trend doesn't look as if it's going to change. While the preference for tablets has grown gradually, it isn't likely to be reversed. The figures show the public's attraction to what is a newer, more interesting and higher performance category of device.
 

Last August, analysis from Gartner clearly highlighted the decline of the netbook, at least as far as PCs are concerned (down 53%). Macs are still managing to hold their ground.

The figures and studies recently published by DisplaySearch announced that overall laptop sales are doing okay and should even continue to grow up to 2017, in parallel with tablet sales. According to these studies, laptops are set to continue to top sales for several years to come. Up to 2017, growth in laptops could continue at a rate of 16%, so it's very much the netbook category which has been put in peril by the arrival of tablets.





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