Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the Future of Tablets

What 2010 taught us in technology, if nothing else, is that the next few years will be largely centered around tablet computing. It’s changing the way we think about accessing the Internet and, indeed, the way we think of using the Web at all. The possibility of both a new search source and a service platform for the search engine companies is no small deal, so it’s important that they enter this burgeoning market. But how exactly does the future of tablets look right now?

According to a forecast at Forrester, tablet sales will double from 2010 to 2011. This comes as a revision to an earlier forecast from June of 2010, which Forrester says was “too conservative.” The new predicted figure? 24.1 million sold units. They further predict that tablets will reach 82 million U.S. consumers by the end of 2015.

This figure comes from a look at consumer and enterprise surveys, interviews with the various companies who are producing tablets for the 2011 market, and expert-level industry analysis from Forrester reps. Part of the reason for the dramatic shift upward is that Forrester analysts determined that tablets were more likely to see frequent replacement with new models, acting more as a parallel to MP3 players than to desktop computer.

Of course, they didn’t stop with saying how sales would go. Forrester also predicted how the Apple, Microsoft, and Google battlefield would look over the next couple years. Their statement was that, at least through the end of 2012, Apple would remain the key player in the tablet industry, holding the majority of sales. In the meantime, Android is a likely second-place candidate, with RIM and Microsoft both holding some small portion of the market. “But in a market this big,” Forrester reminds us, “there’s room for more than one player.”