In a report by NPD DisplaySearch, the organization believes that the mobile PC market will grow more by more than 100% for the next 5 years. In 2012, there were about 368 million units sold and it is expected to grow by as much as 395 million in 2017. Tablet PCs are believed to replace the regular notebook and touch screens are to be embedded to a lot of laptops. Today, all manufacturers manufacture at least one touch screen model.
Tablet shipments are expected to grow 67% this year and will amount to at least 256 million units while notebook shipments will be down by as much as 20 million by 2017 from 203 million this year. Ultrabooks and MacBook Air are also expected to use touch screen technology in the near future. According to NPD DisplaySearch, Windows 8 isn’t the driving force towards touch screen adoption although the technology is a requirement for certification by Microsoft.
Because of this expected growth, Apple is set to benefit the most from this good news. In the 2nd quarter of this year, the company sold at least 19 million iPads. Although some manufacturers are also experiencing growth, these companies aren’t expected to equal that of Apple’s iPad.