If it sometimes feels as if everyone and her grandmother are hawking a tablet device, you aren’t too far off. By the second-half of 2011 there is a “high risk of facing excess tablet PC inventory,” one industry publication writes Wednesday. The report claims “demand scale” is only for 20 million units.
Analysts already predict Apple will sell anywhere between 18 million and 48 million iPads this year, with 23 million units in 2012. The overall tablet market could reach 55.7 million units in 2011.
The key to this ‘tablet glut‘ is the entry of second-string tech companies into the tablet fray now occupied by Apple, HP, RIM and other top players. Today’s report from DigiTimes harkens back to an earlier one in late 2010. The publication, quoting suppliers, warned of a “sharp drop in demand as soon as the third quarter of 2011.”
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
18 responses to “Watch Out for ‘Tablet Glut’ Amid Expected Excess PC-Based Inventory”
“The key to this ‘tablet glut‘ is the entry of second-string tech companies into the tablet fray now occupied by Apple, HP, RIM and other top players.”
Let’s be real. HP and Rim don’t “occupy” the tablet space because they don’t have finished products on the market yet. Why are so many tech writers so eager to extend charity to every company but Apple?
Dude they will be making them thought that is what this story is about. The future, over-supplie of tablets everyone is going to make one. Everyone has been working on one Apple just hurried up and made sure they brought theirs out first.
Was in a BJs wholesale club in CT last week. As you enter the warehouse next to all the junk they have a Huge display of WiFi-Only Samsung Galaxy Tab for only $349.00 out the door, no contract. Lol just a few weeks ago was $600 at Att store. Sammy must be dumping them as fast as they can. Soon it will be buy any Sammy android phone and get a tab for $99.00. What a bath Sammy is taking. Now intel wants to fab all of apples A5 chips. They should of stuck to selling just TVs.
Just exactly what sort of tablet space is HP and RIM going to occupy? Running with Android will make your tablet just like everyone else’s and RIM releasing the PlayBook without even something an email client starts them off dead in the waters. QNX may be a possible future for them but not if Microsoft has anything to say about it.
And I thought there was only true real tablet, the iPad.
You missed the point. The future is the future, but now, RIM and HP do not “occupy the tablet space” as the blog post claims.
When the Chinese ‘second string’ tablet makers get into the game, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG and all the other name Android tablet makers will start kissing the tablet business good bye. Good luck trying to make money against the Alibaba crowd. You just can’t have any iPad pretensions if the same OS you’re using can be had in a dirt cheap third world special. I don’t understand why these companies went into the Android device business completely disregarding the fact that Google set up its Android licensing program in a way that pretty much guarantees a future of commoditized Android devices. I mean the example of Windows is sitting right there in front of them, what?
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Moreover you’re wrong: no one was working on any tablets, since everyone thought the tablet business was dead, until apple showed them how to make it right. Only then did they start copying apple, this is why they are late to the game.