ABI Research forecasts that 11 million tablets will be shipped this year, which means that the audiences on devices such as the iPad are growing and becoming more valuable to mobile advertisers and marketers.

The study also found that 43 million netbooks will ship worldwide this year. Apple has sold a few million iPads in its first quarter, but early adoption of media tablets is not outpacing netbooks.

?For marketers this data means that there are even more screens to reach consumers via branded messaging, whether it is browser-based or in-app ads,? said Jeff Orr, research principal analyst at ABI Research, Oyster Bay, NY. ?It also means a lot of applications similar to the set for iPhone, but with a larger real estate, which provides a bigger canvas for marketing.?

Competition
The iPad average selling price is above $650 and so the device is not driving mass adoption, per ABI Research.

Competition, especially on price, is needed, per Mr. Orr.
 
Apple, which has had the tablet market almost to itself, will soon have company.

Samsung will start selling its Galaxy Tab through wireless carriers this year, a distribution model that differentiates it from the iPad.

The carriers want a piece of the new device market, not simply to provide services.

In the United States, the Galaxy Tab will be available through AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, which could make it a strong competitor to the iPad.

Vodafone will carry it in Britain and possibly elsewhere, as will NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
 
To date, tablets? use-case is almost entirely consumer-based.

The enterprise market for tablets as a real replacement for laptops and smartphones is virtually nonexistent.

However, per ABI practice director Kevin Burden, RIM?s new PlayBook tablet may be more palatable to IT managers because at this point it is not a standalone device: it needs to be paired with a BlackBerry.

The iPad user base
Brands and marketers have worked hard since the release of the iPad to understand how best to engage users of the device.

Yahoo recently found that consumers accessing their Internet services via iPads were more likely to access news content, and fit an early adopter profile (see story).

Additionally, 23 percent of the on-the-go audience plans to buy an iPad, according to JiWire (see story).

Likewise, Strategy Analytics has observed that iPad owners tend to follow an early adopter profile, and that older consumers are less likely to own the device.

Not surprisingly, the 25-34 age group is the most prominent user group of the iPad. Also, there is little sign of many users in the 45-plus segment so far.

?The tablet platforms are so new and diverse there is no simple way to cover all of them because of the fragmentation in the market,? Mr. Orr said. ?So ads on the iPad would be a unique effort than when working with a different tablet."

Final take
Giselle Tsirulnik is senior editor of Mobile Marketer