Gartner predicts strong growth for tablet market

Western Europe will account for 28 per cent of tablet sales this year, Gartner has claimed in its latest study.

These figures were dwarfed by the US cut of the market at 61 per cent, but strong growth in the market will change this. By 2014, Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi, predicted the US market would fall back to 43 per cent while Europe would account for a more evenly-balanced 37 per cent of sales.

Gartner has chosen to call these devices media tablets to distinguish them from tablet PCs, the more functional laptop replacements evangelised by Microsoft. As such, Milanesi does not see them as cannibalising the laptops' domain. Instead, it will be e-readers, media players and gaming devices that will suffer, she wrote.

An interesting note in the report came from the study of the tablet versus the smartphone. Though Gartner analysts expect tablets to have a very limited effect on open OS smartphones, they expressed a belief that seven-inch tablet sales may affect sales of high-end smartphones.

"Users buying a seven-inch tablet might opt for a lower priced smartphone with a smaller form factor," Milanesi said.

Although the report is called ""Forecast: Connected Mobile Consumer Electronics, Worldwide, 2008-2014," many of the tablets sold are destined to find their way into the workplace. The author does not see these as being a corporate buy because many knowledge workers already have a notebook PC and a smartphone.

"Because of the convenience factor for travel and an instant on' for quick look-up functions, many users are paying for the media tablets with their own money to use both for work and pleasure," Milanesi observed.

Milanesi said she believed the 10in format would prove more popular for business use.

She wrote: "In the enterprise space, for the immediate future, the main use of media tablets is as a notebook companion or as a secondary device to take on the road or use for fast access to email, calendaring, interrogating web applications and information sources, and showing PowerPoint presentations."