One analyst firm brings up an interesting reason why HP may want its TouchPad to succeed: tablets are reducing the need for printers and profit-rich print supplies. That’s the word from a Wall Street research company predicting tablet could shrink corporate and business printing demand by two percent to five percent in 2012.
“Printing behavior is structurally changing; we expect a reduction in enterprise and commercial printing,” according to a Morgan Stanley report on tablets. HP is one of the printing firms expected to be most affected by the move to tablet. Other printer makers facing cuts due to the influx of tablets: Lexmark and Ricoh.
Earlier this month, DisplaySearch, a division of consumer electronics researcher NPD Group, announced it expects a 200 percent increase of tablet shipments in 2011, to 55.7 million units. By 2014, the number of tablets should hit 174.2 million, or 35 percent of the overall mobile PC market.
