PC Sales To Grow, Thanks to Tablets: Forrester

At the All Things Digital D8 conference earlier this month, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs made the modern-day shot heard 'round the world when he predicted that the PC would fade from use and be supplanted by tablet computers.

He compared PCs to trucks: everyone had to own them when we were an agrarian society, but now only businesses use trucks, while consumers use cars. Jobs's computing equivalent to the car? The tablet.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer followed Jobs the next night and disagreed, stating he believed people would use PCs "in greater and greater numbers for years to come."

As the two perspectives continue to be debated, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps weighed in this week at the Untethered conference taking place in New York.

One reason for the different conclusion is semantics. Jobs sees a separation between the PC device and the tablet, but Epps is lumping in the tablet with the desktop, laptop and netbook in total. "Jobs may not view the iPad as a PC, but we do," Epps wrote in a blog post that mirrored Ballmer's view of the market.

Whether you lump tablets in with netbooks and notebooks or not, the market for tablets will not grow at the expense of the other two. Over time, Forrester projects that netbooks and notebooks will hold their percentage of the market even as tablets grow. Desktops, on the other hand, will lose share over time.

Between now and 2015, Epps sees tablets and desktops making the largest changes in share while laptops and netbooks hold relatively steady. Epps projects 3.5 million tablets including the iPad and contenders will be sold this year, accounting for 6 percent of the U.S. PC market.

By 2015, that will grow to 20.4 million units and 23 percent of the market. Desktop sales will go from 18.7 million units and 32 percent of the market in 2010 to 15.7 million units, accounting for 18 percent of sales, in 2015. The percentage slide of desktop sales is greater than its numerical fall because tablets are working into the mix.

Netbooks will hold pretty much steady; they account for 18 percent of sales now and will be 17 percent of overall sales by 2015. Notebooks are 45 percent of sales now and will be 42 percent of sales come 2015, Epps predicts. Overall, she thinks more PCs will be sold in 2015 than 2010 as people take ownership of multiple devices, both stationary and mobile.

"Our view is that the consumer PC market in the U.S. is indeed getting bigger: Over the next five years, PC unit sales across all form factors will increase by 52 percent. In fact, desktops are the only type of PC whose numbers will be fewer in 2015 than they are today -- and even desktops will benefit from innovation in gaming and 3D," said Epps.

Epps said 72 percent of U.S. consumers still use a desktop and that number is not being abandoned any time soon. The multi-PC household of 2015 will have multiple laptops, netbooks, and tablets that complement a powerful, stationary desktop or two. The growth of high definition video and 3D video and graphics will require a PC like that.

Epps noted in a research paper on the PC market that consumers didn't ask for tablets, and that Forrester’s data showed that the top features on consumers' wish lists were "a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad." But Apple has successfully done something very few companies can do: it taught consumers to want this new device.

"Supply-side innovation will spur consumer demand, not vice versa. Three years occurred between the emergence of netbooks with the ASUS Eee PC in 2007 and the emergence of tablets with the iPad in 2010. If the same pattern of tech innovation and digestion holds, we could see the next form factor find a toehold by 2013," she wrote.

The bottom line for product strategists, she says: Plan for growth in new form factors but also anticipate the continued relevance of "traditional" PCs, which aren't becoming "farm trucks" anytime soon.

Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.