Morgan Stanley believes the tablet market is going to grow even bigger other analysts even imagine-- its best-case scenario predicting WW shipments will reach 100m units in 2012 alone.
Manufacturers are reported to globally ship 16m units in 2010.
As seen in the analyst's chart, tablets show impressive market penetration (far beyond the likes of e-readers, notebooks or even smarthphones) in their first 5 years on the market.
Fastest growing device on the market? No doubt about that. And not only within the consumer market (where tablets are cannibalising into the PC market-- unless one considers tablets as part of the PC market!), but also in enterprise.
Morgan Stanley predicts 51% of companies will be buying their employees tablet device in 2011-- while a further 16% will allow employees to use their tablet devices on their company networks (whether employee tablet usage will simply involve the joys of Angry Birds remains to be seen, though).
Who'll be the tablet market's true winner? Surprise surprise, it's Apple! Not merely because of the iPad and its future sequel (although that helps, too), but also because it has 60% of the world's touch panel supply firmly under lockdown. Result? Rival manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung, HP, RIM in particular) not being able to ship in large volumes while second tier players ending up squeezed right out of the market.
The other winner is ARM, leader when it comes to the much required low-power processors tablets run on.
A final winner thanks to tablets-- the cloud. As the computer world fragments into many devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops), the cloud will be the factor tying every user experience together.