When I was in grad school, my classmates didn't think too highly of Forrester Research because some of their projections were downright unrealistic. Looks like tey're at it again.
There are 2 types of tablets:
- convertibles (notebooks those with more-or-less permanently attached hardware keyboards) and
- slates (without hardware keyboards).
Convertibles have to significantly improve their handwriting recognition to near 100% (a very tall order), get much lighter, get faster (so they won't seem so sluggish), have much longer battery life (which flies in the face of lieggter weight), support active digitizers (for handwriting recognition) and palm rejection, and above all, get much cheaper, to $500.
Slates need to get a little lighter, figure out how to have a part time docked hardware keyboard which you can use on the move, have longer battery life, have built-in office grade applications and not just applets, have always-on connectivity (requiring an all-you-can-eat data plan, which is not what AT&T would have you). They also need to get as cheap as netbooks, or $250-$350.
While I do believe that tablets will eventually outsell other forms of laptops, I don't think the technical challenges will be surmounted soon eough to enable tablets to outsell others as soon as Forrester thinks.
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