Implications of Increased 7-Inch Tablet Popularity Good For Mac And PC Sales

Writing for TechPinions, Patrick Moorhead, ranked the #1 technology industry analyst by Apollo Research in October, 2012, President and Principal Analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy, comments on a recent DisplaySearch analysis entitled, “Smaller Tablet PCs to Take Over in 2013?”, which notes a volume decrease of 9.7-10″ displays and the increase of 7.X” displays in January of 2013.

Moorhead observes that given the popularity of the iPad mini, Kindle Fe HD, Nexus 7 and sundry “white tablets,” and if we are indeed in a volume shift from larger displays to smaller display tablets, there are two key implications which he thinks are very important because they impact the entire tech ecosystem.

The first implication of 7″ tablet popularity is the creation of a new ecosystem, says Moorhead, stating his belief that companies with subsidized business models will be the most likely OEM winners in 7″ tablets, ie: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Other winners will be OEMs with strong consumer brands or huge marketing budgets like Apple and Samsung.

The second implication of the increased popularity of 7″ tablets as defined by Moorhead has nothing to do with tablets at all, but with personal computers. He notes that 10″ tablets, more than 7″ tablets, have the ability to augment or replace certain PC usage models. He says he used an iPad for years as his primary (% time spent) productivity device, but would never ever finalize a document on the iPad. (Editor’s note: dotto for my usage unless the finalization is pretty rudimentary. Ed.) He observes that typing on a tablet entails some very uncomfortable typing where half the display is covered by the on-screen keyboard, but 7-inch tablets are greatfor reading and deleting emails, watching videos, reading e-books, and browsing simple web sites, from which obseration he deduces that users with 7-inch tablets have an even greater need for a modern notebook as their anchor computing device more than those with 10-inch tablets, which should be healthy for PC sales, and he expecvts the popularity of 7-inch tablets will make notebooks look more attractive and give a boost to sales of MacBooks and Windows notebooks.

For the full commentary, visit:
http://goo.gl/jZCW8

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