Tablet sales will reach 81 million by 2015

THE PROPHETS at Juniper Research have been consulting their tea leaves and think that the number of annual shipments of tablet devices will reach 81 million by 2015.

Apparently all this gear will be flogged because more consumer electronics players and handset manufacturers will enter the market.

It claimed that Android is allowing both new players and existing device manufacturers to join the market and products have been launched already by companies such as Dell with the Streak and Samsung with the Galaxy Tab.

Anthony Cox, senior analyst at Juniper Research said that competition for Apple is likely to arrive in earnest in 2011.

Earnest is apparently a small town outside Vegas. Cox thinks that by then Jobs' Mob will have launched another version of the Ipad and will still be coining it in.

Apple, as first to market with its compelling hardware and content combination, will maintain its market lead for the medium term, Cox said.

Products using QNX for Blackberry smartphones, Windows Phone 7 and MeeGo will come to market in 2011 and of course the netbook market will be pressured. However Juniper thinks that netbooks will remain resilient in the business market.

The big loser to the rise of Apple will be Nokia, which will be challenged by the increasing sophistication of Apple's IOS and Google's Android OS.

According to Cox's report, handset manufacturers with the longest history in the market and a close association with a specific operating system face the greatest challenges. Apple's IOS and the Android OS have affected RIM, Microsoft and Nokia the most, the report claimed.

Juniper thinks that the established smartphone outfits waited too long to challenge Apple.

The company did not say what uses people are going make of tablets or what the killer app for them will be. µ