Apple ’s iPad will drive the burgeoning tablet computer marketplace and freight could grow sixfold by 2014 , IDC pronounce in enquiry released on Thursday .
IDC jut tablet lading to reach 7 million this year and top 46 million in 2014 .
pad of paper becoming differentiated from PCs or smartphones could also push development , say Susan Kevorkian , course of study director at IDC . Applications , subject and services design for tablets could further drive the specialization .
As more software become usable , tablets will become “ necessities for many consumers , ” Kevorkian said .
IDC delimit tablets as medium computing devices with diagonal screen between 7 inches and 12 in , and with no physical keyboard . They run on weapon system processors and operating systems such as Apple ’s iPhone OS and Google ’s Android OS . Tablets are primarily designed to surfboard the web , play games , watch video and interpret e - books .
pad shipments in 2010 will in all likelihood be dominated by Apple ’s iPad , which hit the market on April 3 . sooner this month , Apple tell it had sell 1 million iPads in the first 28 days . Apple declare oneself specialized content for iPads from publisher and has an program storage for downloadable curriculum .
Beyond Apple , a routine of other personal computer manufacturing business have their view set up on the lozenge grocery store . Hewlett - Packard , which late last month impinge on a deal to develop Palm for $ 1.2 billion , earlier this week sound out it would use Palm ’s WebOS in tablets .
magnanimous PC makers such as Asus and Lenovo also plan to publish tables with dissimilar screen door sizes . Smaller company , including WeTab , Notion Ink and Fusion Garage are either merchant vessels or program to ship tablet soon .
Seeing the potential drop in the grocery , potato chip companies Intel , Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are also putting their free weight behind the product class . Intel ’s executive last week at an analyst conference hammered hometheir sake in the category , say that tablets with Intel chip will be show at the coming Computex business deal show in Taipei in other June . A numeral of tablets demonstrated so far run on Nvidia ’s Tegra 2 chip , and AMD has say it was fine-tune the Bobcat architecture for “ launching pad ” equipment .
