Market researcher Gartner is bullish on the prospects for tablet computers. This year, the devices will see sales of 19.5 million, and rocket 181 percent to 54.8 million next year, Gartner is forecasting.
It’s impossible to tell the tablet story without placing Apple’s iPad, the device that more than any other jumpstarted the current craze, at the center. But it has quickly grown well beyond the iPad, with Apple rivals such as Samsung and Microsoft getting into the tablet game.
Datamation takes a look at Gartner’s findings, including its thoughts on enterprise adoption.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, whose recent statements that “job one” at the software giant, is to port Windows 7 to slate computers, has a new report to reaffirm just how important that market is likely to become over the next four years.
In fact, the report from researcher Gartner said that in 2010 alone, 19.5 million “media tablets” will be sold to end users. Sales will be led, of course, by Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad, which had sold 3.27 million units by the end of Apple’s third fiscal quarter on June 26, according to the company.
