A huge boost to wholesale android tablets manufacturers -Priceangels.com

PC sales have slumped in the last two years as consumers abandon laptops for touchscreen wholesale android tablets, sales of which have grown exponentially since the release of the iPad in 2010.The changing consumer habits have come as a huge boost to tablet manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung, while creating trouble for companies exposed to the PC market, like Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

IDC predicted that the short-term boost at Christmas would lead tablet sales to overtake PCs, although for 2013 and 2014 as a whole PCs will continue to outsell tablets. In 2015 it expects tablets to outsell PCs and for this shift to be permanent.Tablets will make up 14.6pc of global sales of “smart connected devices” – PCs, wholesale android tablets and smartphones – in 2013, while PCs will account for 20.2pc. By 2015 this will have been reversed to 15.9pc tablets and 15pc PCs, and by 2017 the balance will be 16.5pc tablets and 13pc PCs.

IDC claimed that tablet growth is likely to slow down as smartphones with large screens become the norm. Sales of these so-called “phablets” – a combination of the word “phone” and “tablet” - are expected to eat into sales of smaller tablets."At a time when the smartphone and tablet markets are showing early signs of saturation, the emergence of lower-priced devices will be a game-changer," said IDC's Megha Saini."Introducing new handsets and tablet devices at cheaper price points along with special initiatives like trade-in programs from Apple and BestBuy will accelerate the upgrade cycle and expand the total addressable market overnight."Microsoft has been trying to hit Apple hard to get people to buy Surface tablets rather than iPads.dfdWG4fa 

There's currently a ubiquitous TV ad campaign showing off what Microsoft believes are the superiority of its tablets over iPads, such as a keyboard, although the ad doesn't mention that the keyboard typically adds to the price of a Surface.Tablets have been around in one form or another for many years, but it's only in the last few that they have really made an impact in the computing world. We've looked at how you can use a tablet productively in class and shown you easy ways to keep your tablet in your kitchen, mount it in your bedroom, and even incorporate one into your car's dashboard. 

Chipmaker Intel today unveiled the hardware it hopes will help it establish a much-needed foothold in the burgeoning tablet market.Getting more Intel chips inside tablets is increasingly important for Intel as sales of desktop and laptop PCs — a market Intel has dominated for decades — dwindle, while cheap tablets are forecast to sell in ever larger numbers.Intel is hoping to persuade tablet makers to swap out the ARM-based low power Risc chips that sit inside the majority of tablets today for the Intel Bay Trail platform - specifically its Atom Z3000 series of System on a Chips (SoCs).

The Z3000 is Intel's second recent attempt to break into the mainstream tablet market, after its earlier Atom SoCs – inside its Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ platforms - only made it into a relatively small number of tablets.On the face of it the Z3000 series addresses some of the criticisms levelled at Clover Trail, primarily it's faster and allows tablets to run for longer off the same battery.