11:22
Amna
New reports show the tablet category booming, Apple dominating, and enterprises adopting. But that's not all. Feature by feature, tablets and other mobile devices are beginning to influence the direction of personal computers.
A report released Thursday from ABI Research showed that, to no one's surprise, Apple's category-defining iPad had 85 percent of the market for tablets in 2010. ABI said Samsung's Galaxy Tab was a "distant second" in market share at about eight percent, and ARCHOS' Internet Tablet just barely registered at two percent.
'Evolution of Computers'
As the tablet category grows, enterprises are getting aboard. Earlier this month, Strategy Analytics issued a study that found 61 percent of U.S. corporations reporting tablet use by employees. The study, Are Tablets Set for Enterprise Primetime?, found that the growth of bring-your-own-device work policies, the availability of high-speed networks, and the shift to virtualized and cloud -computing environments are catalysts promoting the use of tablets in enterprises.
And the future for the category couldn't be brighter. ABI projects that 40 million to 50 million tablets will be sold worldwide this year. The report also throws cold water on a persistent theme, that tablets are cannibalizing laptop and PC sales -- at least through the end of 2010. "The hype that media tablets were displacing portable computers" and dedicated consumer electronics devices, the report states, "simply didn't become a reality."
But if tablets aren't cannibalizing computers, they are changing them. App stores, near-instant on, and solid-state storage are among the features that are increasingly being shared by both platforms. Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, noted that some of these advances can be seen as simply part "of the evolution of computers," although he allowed that app stores are an "offshoot of the smartphone world" -- which, arguably, begat tablets.
'Personality of Apps'
Greengart said PCs are again innovating after a period of relative stasis, with that innovation "being driven by smartphones and tablets."
Apple's next major version of Mac OS X, called Lion, is expected to display programs as if they were apps, and Microsoft has said Windows 8 will adopt tablet-like concepts. Greengart said an even better example of the influence of tablets and mobile devices is Hewlett-Packard's use of its webOS platform on PCs as well as on smartphones and tablets.
Al Hilwa, program director for application development at IDC, said the current trend of tablets influencing PCs is "all about making sure that apps' personalities work on PCs as well as on mobile devices."
To do that, he said, "touch, mobility and sensors have to be injected into PCs." Hilwa noted that tablets and other mobile devices have created a new sense of what an application contains, including knowledge about what sensors such as GPS or cameras are indicating, and "making touch into a first-class interface."
A report released Thursday from ABI Research showed that, to no one's surprise, Apple's category-defining iPad had 85 percent of the market for tablets in 2010. ABI said Samsung's Galaxy Tab was a "distant second" in market share at about eight percent, and ARCHOS' Internet Tablet just barely registered at two percent.
'Evolution of Computers'
As the tablet category grows, enterprises are getting aboard. Earlier this month, Strategy Analytics issued a study that found 61 percent of U.S. corporations reporting tablet use by employees. The study, Are Tablets Set for Enterprise Primetime?, found that the growth of bring-your-own-device work policies, the availability of high-speed networks, and the shift to virtualized and cloud -computing environments are catalysts promoting the use of tablets in enterprises.
And the future for the category couldn't be brighter. ABI projects that 40 million to 50 million tablets will be sold worldwide this year. The report also throws cold water on a persistent theme, that tablets are cannibalizing laptop and PC sales -- at least through the end of 2010. "The hype that media tablets were displacing portable computers" and dedicated consumer electronics devices, the report states, "simply didn't become a reality."
But if tablets aren't cannibalizing computers, they are changing them. App stores, near-instant on, and solid-state storage are among the features that are increasingly being shared by both platforms. Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, noted that some of these advances can be seen as simply part "of the evolution of computers," although he allowed that app stores are an "offshoot of the smartphone world" -- which, arguably, begat tablets.
'Personality of Apps'
Greengart said PCs are again innovating after a period of relative stasis, with that innovation "being driven by smartphones and tablets."
Apple's next major version of Mac OS X, called Lion, is expected to display programs as if they were apps, and Microsoft has said Windows 8 will adopt tablet-like concepts. Greengart said an even better example of the influence of tablets and mobile devices is Hewlett-Packard's use of its webOS platform on PCs as well as on smartphones and tablets.
Al Hilwa, program director for application development at IDC, said the current trend of tablets influencing PCs is "all about making sure that apps' personalities work on PCs as well as on mobile devices."
To do that, he said, "touch, mobility and sensors have to be injected into PCs." Hilwa noted that tablets and other mobile devices have created a new sense of what an application contains, including knowledge about what sensors such as GPS or cameras are indicating, and "making touch into a first-class interface."
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