Non-Apple Tablet Opportunity for PC Makers in 2011 (AAPL, QCOM, INTC, ARMH, HPQ, DELL, RIMM)

The craze of late-2008 into 2009 was the netbook.  The new craze is the tablet PC, and you do not need to be told about the iPad from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).  Over the recent days and weeks we have seen announcements from other PC makers about their own ambitions plans for variations of the tablet market.  A report from Digitimes is putting the 2011 market at roughly 20 million to 30 million tablet PC units (outside of Apple) that will be shipped in 2011.

Digitimes noted that the 20 to 30 million units will be shipped to the global market in 2011.  The report notes that handset vendors are inclined to adopt Qualcomm-developed baseband chips in combination with multimedia processors for their tablet PCs, notebook vendors prefer solutions based on GPUs plus baseband chips.  QUALCOMM Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) has room here, and now there are reports from Digitimes.  Digitimes also noted that ARM Holdings plc (NASDAQ: ARMH) has a low price and power consumption lead over Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), but Intel has recently started mass production of its Oak Trail platform specifically for tablet PCs.

The big players mentioned in the tablet market with new models out or soon to be out are Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE HPQ), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), and Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM).  Others are Asustek, Lenovo, and Acer.  Digitimes noted that competing models should be less expensive than iPad, but that will make it difficult for vendors to profit based on estimates that 16-64GB iPads carry a BOM cost of US$229-346 and sell at US$499-829.

Full data from Digitimes on non-iPad forecasts and on Intel processor plans is here.

Too bad all of these companies allowed Apple get such a lead on them.  The demand was there and movies have been showing prototype and demo models for years.

JON C. OGG