According to the research firm, Forrester, the number of global tablet users will increase from 15 million in 2010 to 905 million by 2017.
The sales of tablets will increase from 122 million in 2012 to 381 million in 2017, registering a compound annual growth rate of 25.6 per cent. The majority of the tablet sales in 2017 will be driven by individual consumers. Further, enterprise purchases will account for 18 per cent of the total sales. The research firm states that majority of the tablet users are either upgrading their existing tablets or buying new ones, even as the adoption of tablets is growing among non-user groups.
Forrester expects about 60 per cent of online consumers in North America to own a tablet by 2017. In Europe, 42 percent of online consumers will own a tablet.
Meanwhile, the penetration rates in the developing markets will not even reach 25 per cent in aggregate by 2017. Despite this, tablets will become a preferred mobility device among majority of the users in the leading Asian markets, including Singapore and South Korea. Further, the research firm predicts that with the emergence of bring-your-own device phenomenon, tablets will become pervasive in workplaces in developing countries.
