Rogers hosted the TabLife 2010 conference today. It featured keynotes, panels and a case study looking at how tablets have begun to change our lives, both at home and at work, and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few highlights from the event’s keynotes.
From Duncan Stewart,Director, Deloitte Canada Research:
- Tablets set to become the Goldilock device, neither too small nor too big but just right.
- Early predictions suggest that there will be 4 to 6 operating systems competing by 2014.
- While Canada may not have to deal with network congestion, other countries will not be so lucky. 4G not expected to resolve the issue – The explosive growth of tablets and other connected devices will strain networks no matter how fast they are.
- Some predictions that some 100 million tablets could be sold in 2014 although Duncan described this number as a “wild guess.” The average price will drop to USD$400. Compare that to the smartphone market where some 800 million devices are expected to be sold at an average price around US$150.
- About 40 million tablets could be sold in 2011.
- Market share in 2010 dominated by Apple (90 percent) with all others accounting for the remaining 10 percent. In 2011, expect to see Apple capture about 75 percent, Android 20 percent, and the other players about 5 percent. By 2014, both Apple and Android will each own 40 percent with Windows capturing 15 percent. The enterprise share is expected to climb from 10 percent to as high as 40 percent.
The next keynote was by John Boynton, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Rogers Communications. He had a few interesting comments and number of announcements:
- Tablets are part of a larger trend where users are shifting from a single device to multiple connected devices
- 44 percent of tablet users would give up their PC before their tablet
- Rogers will launch a tablet Remote PVR app early next year
- Rogers On Demand Online is headed to tablets in Q1 2011
- Data sharing plans for multiple devices
- Rogers confirmed it will carry the RIM PlayBook when it is launched in Q1 2011
The event then moved onto a couple of panel discussions which I’ll cover in another post.