Tablets could render laptops obsolete: AT&T

Greg Bensinger | August 30, 2010

Bloomberg Businessweek

(Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc.’s emerging devices president, who oversees the carrier’s relationship with Apple Inc., said tablet computers costing as much as $1,000 might soon make many laptops obsolete.

“You’re going to see those 10-inch pieces of glass become full-on computers,” Glenn Lurie said in an interview this month in Atlanta. He said he expects there to be a variety of tablet computers costing $300 to $1,000 in the next five years. The Apple iPad ranges in price from $499 to $829.

AT&T may draw more revenue by compelling new and existing customers to buy tablet computers that will complement their smartphones. The carrier is the exclusive data-service provider for the iPad, which has sold more than 3 million units since its April 3 introduction.

Sales of tablet devices probably will grow to 23 percent of the U.S. computer market by 2015, from about 6 percent this year and less than 1 percent in 2009, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Starting in 2012, tablets will outsell netbooks, and by 2014, more consumers will use tablets than will use netbooks,” Epps, referring to the smaller, less powerful laptop-style computers, said in a report this month.

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