‘Any argument that a pad is not a PC is simply out of sync,’ said Chiam. ‘With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power, and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks. They compete for the same customers and will happily coexist. As with smart phones, some users will require a physical keyboard, while others will do without.’
‘Each new product category typically causes a significant shift in market shares,’ said Chiam. ‘Apple is benefiting from pads, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus previously did with netbooks. The PC industry has always evolved this way, starting when Toshiba and Compaq rode high on the original notebook wave.’
via Canalys reports global PC market growth of 19% in Q4 2010 (Canalys research release: r2011012).
Five years ago, back when Gartner and IDC were confused about what a smartphone was Canalys was on top of the market and was the first to correctly describe the smartphone.
Kudos for being first again to recognize a re-defined market.