Despite some consumer electronics (CE) market slowness for some devices, the buzz around tablets, especially Apple's iPad, is keeping this CE device market hot. In response to the enormous popularity and success of the iPad, Samsung, Toshiba and a few others have already begun debuting their tablets to compete with Apple. However, iSuppli holds that with a healthy first mover advantage of 74.1% of tablet marketshare in 2010, Apple's iPad will "maintain a dominant share in the tablet market at least through 2012." (cf. also Credit Suisse's recent report dated 9/3/10: "Taiwan Hardware Sector: iPad – revolution in the tech food chain")
Previously, the 'PC' battleground was netbook versus notebook, which begs the question: 'what of these device wars now that we have tablets, increasingly sophisticated smartphones, netbooks, notebooks, and desktops'? Well, the newly minted category of 'smart wireless devices' (SWD) may just be the rose that smells as sweet. Regardless of how the tablet-netbook-notebook-PC battles end (if they indeed ever do), what is interesting is that demand is rich for tablets, netbooks, smartphones and similar SWDs which tell us of the growing role and healthy quarters through 2013 ahead for NAND and similarly vital components (cf. this Solid State Technology piece, and a review of Gartner's forecast in EETimesAsia here).
Consumers are demanding, and devices are therefore moving to incorporate, more internet, video and streaming TV functionality into SWDs, as underscored by the recent Apple conference. Given that consumers continue to be attracted to the interface, portability and versatility of tablets and smartphones, the components that are set to see strong growth are, quite naturally, those that support these devices. So, don't expect demand for those components or devices to slow down anytime soon.
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