NPD: Apple will lose quarter of tablet market by 2017 - ZDNet (blog)

Summary: The tablet market is predicted to grow five times over by 2017, but Apple won’t account for as much of it by then.

The tablet PC market is expected to grow five times over in the next five years, according to global market research and consulting firm NPD DisplaySearch.

Specifically, tablet shipments are predicted to grow from 81.6 million units in 2011 to 424.9 million units by 2017.

NPD analysts are attributing the surge to an expected flourish in diversity among mobile operating systems and display technologies.

NPD DisplaySearch senior analyst Richard Shim further explained in the report:

So far in this relatively young product category, the tablet PC market has been dominated by Apple and has tended to include a number of competing products that are similarly configured to the iPad.

However, as the market matures and competitors become better attuned to consumer preferences and find opportunities to break new ground, we expect the landscape to change dramatically, giving consumers more choices, which will drive demand for more devices.

By next year, NPD posited that Apple will control close to 75 percent of the global tablet platform market with iOS on the iPad.

However, even though Apple is expected to hold on to the lead for the next five years, they’ll lose a significant grasp on it. NPD researchers predict iOS will account for a little more than 50 percent of the spectrum by 2017.

Instead, Android will grow significantly as NPD points towards Amazon’s Kindle Fire for igniting more diversification in the market. Furthermore, Windows 8 is expected to play a bigger role in this field, leaping from a fractional 1.5 percent in 2012 by 7.5 percent in 2017.

Chart via NPD DisplaySearch

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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.