According to research firm Gartner, global tablet sales will hit almost 20 million for this year, buoyed by strong sales of the Apple iPad.
Forecasting into the future, the group says sales will explode to 54.8 million units in 2011 and eventually 208 million units by 2014.
For 2010, North American consumers will purchase 61 percent of the 19.5 million expected tablet sales but by 2013 that number will fall to 43 percent.
Tablets are described as “slate” touch-screen devices running a mobile operating system such as WebOS, iOS, Android or Meego.
Apple has sold an estimated 8.5 million iPads this year.
Gartner also noted that netbooks will be cannibalized as tablets begin selling for under $300 in the next couple of years.
Result for: american consumers
It’s no secret that certain elements in the US Federal Government would like to see all copyright infringement criminalized and the Department of Justice used as an enforcement agency for intellectual property owners. What gets less publicity is the work by the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) to similarly effect the law in other countries. Earlier this week the USTR’s office issued a press release declaring victory in one such case against China, but behind their celebration is actually a significant defeat.
Although the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed with US claims that China isn’t living up to their obligation to protect foreign copyrights under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The portion of the treaty in question requires that all participants at least criminalize willful commercial infringement of intellectual property.
Specifically, a WTO panel concluded that the US hadn’t profided any real evidence since it was all in the form of newspaper clippings. According to the WTO report, “the Panel does not ascribe any weight to the evidence in the press articles and finds that, even if it did, the information that these press articles contain is inadequate to demonstrate what is typical or usual in China for the purposes of the relevant treaty obligation.”
The report further admonished the US for substituting claims of bad behavior for evidence of specific wrong doing. The report says “A complaining party may not simply submit evidence and expect the panel to divine from it a claim of WTO-inconsistency. Nor may a complaining party simply allege facts without relating them to its legal arguments.”
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Result for: american consumers
According to Reuters, the media research firm Interpret has revealed that just about 60 percent of American consumers are now aware of Blu-ray as a disc format and that the number of households with Blu-ray players is approaching the 10 million mark.
The report, a survey of consumers aged 18-54, is unfortunately outdated already however, as it was conducted in mid-January, Right after Warner’s decision to go Blu-ray but before the recent demise of rival HD DVD.
The study did find some interesting stats however. Men 18-34 in the US had a Blu-ray awareness of 76 percent while awareness is at 56 percent in Great Britain, 49 percent in Germany, 45 percent in Japan and a lowly 30 percent in France.
An Interpret exec added that Blu-ray-backing companies “still have a lot to do. The format war is over, and they’ve taken Blu-ray from zero to majority awareness, but it doesn’t get easier from here, unfortunately”.
