Acer Chairman is Wrong - Tablet is Here to Stay and Prosper

According to DigiTimes, Acer chairman JT Wang believes "tablet PC fever" is "cool down". When this story was reported by Slashdot, it was called "Acer CEO Declares a Tablets Bubble". I think Acer's chairman is dead wrong.

I talked that HP made a fatal mistake when the company decided to enter the tablet market. The situation is perhaps better in the Android world because most of other tablet OEMs adapt Google's tablet OS. The combined mass creates a comparable Apps developer community to Apple's. However, just because HP decided to quit the tablet market, it does not imply that the consumer no longer need tablets. And certainly, there is no "tablet bubble"!

Looking at Apple's iPad sales in quantity, the numbers grew quarter by quarter and year by year. Apple is projected to sell 30Mu iPad in 2H'11. There are many out there waiting for the iPad 3 coming with higher resolution, from existing iPad and iPad 2 owners, as well as those "I don't have an iPad" consumers. I believe consumers love and want to buy tablets, at the right price and with iPad-comparable performances. The reason I say so is because in the tablet market, there is only one player dominating with huge profits, Apple. That says market demand is larger than supply, and competitions cannot keep up.

Apple basically caught their competitions by surprise. No one knew Apple worked on the product for several years. After iPad was released, Apple's competitors scramble to follow, but they had much less time for both the hardware and software development. In combination, the final products are offered at comparable prices to the iPad, but with sluggish software performance. Just because the PC OEMs cannot compete, it doesn't mean there is a "bubble". Nobody is throwing money away like crazy as in a true "bubble" situation. And for those who can deliver a tablet fitting consumer needs, there is still plenty of money to be made.

I believe in the next a couple of years, we should see strong contenders to Apple's iPad (3?). I think that pack would be led by a Nokia-made tablet running Windows 8 and a Motorola Mobile-made tablet running Android. For the rest, Samsung, hTC, LG, Asus and even Acer, they should either quit tablet and stay with PC, or become much better in their designs. Just don't call it a "bubble".