Funny things, analyst forecasts. The short-term ones tend to be fairly accurate, but the long-term predictions often fall entirely flat. That’s not the fault of the analysts, it’s due to the inherent unpredictability of mobile and technology markets. Nobody saw Android’s success coming, just as nobody thought poor old Nokia Corp. would be in the sorry state they are today ten years ago. So today’s predictions by analyst firm Gartner regarding the state of the tablet market in 2015 could indeed be correct, and it could equally be wildly wrong – nobody knows.
It may seem unlikely that Apple Inc. will continue to rule the tablet roost for another four years given the slew of competition heading their way from Google Inc. and its hardware partners, soon to be joined by Research In Motion Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co. and eventually Microsoft Corp., but history could have something to teach us here.
Apple’s last great revolution, the iPhone, hit the market back in 2007 and was an instant hit, having sold over 100 million units at the time of writing. Android didn’t see a public release until more than a year later in 2008, which is eerily reminiscent of the position we find ourselves in today. The iPad has just reached one year old, and the Android competition is just starting to take off, with the likes of the Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. Xoom and the Asus Tek Computer Inc. Eee Pad.
Take a look at the smartphone market four years down the road – today – and Android has just overtaken iOS as the most popular operating system. The same timetable for the other players to usurp Apple as the top tablet game in town seems entirely reasonable.
However, I’m not going to fall into the trap of making predictions and having them proved impossibly wrong – that’s the analysts’ job.
