Corporations Expected To Increasingly Adopt Tablet Devices
A new survey by ChangeWave Research, tablets introduced by a variety of manufacturers from Dell to Apple are helping to drive corporate usage of the devices.
The survey polled IT buyers from 1,641 businesses and the results suggest that approximately 7 per cent of corporations issue their employees with tablets, a 1 per cent rise from the results of the last survey in August. Apple currently dominates the market with an 82 per cent market share, followed by HP which has an 11 per cent market share, and Dell which has a 7 per cent market share.
HP’s whose tablet offering is a Windows powered 8.9 inch Slate 500 said in November that its device was on backorder due to “extraordinary demand,” In 2011, HP is widely expected to release tablets running its recently acquired Palm webOS.
Dell currently has a 5 inch tablet offering called the Streak which runs the Android 2.2 operating system, but has revealed it is developing a range of devices with a variety of screen sizes.
ChangeWave says that the market for corporate tablet devices is poised for rapid expansion in 2011, with 14 per cent of corporations saying they intended to purchase tablets for the first time during the first quarter of the year.
“In other words, the total number of companies making use of tablet devices is set to double in just the next three months—an explosive surge in demand going forward,” Paul Carton, ChangeWave’s vice president of research wrote.
The overwhelming majority (78 per cent) of IT buyers said they intended to purchase iPads, whilst 9 per cent each said they would by Dell or BlackBerry Tablets, 8 per cent said they would consider an HP device and 4 per cent said they were looking at Samsung Galaxy Tab.
“Although the release of the RIM PlayBook isn’t expected until late-1st Quarter 2011, RIM (9 percent) is now tied with Dell (9 percent) for second place in terms of future buying—a positive development for the Canadian manufacturer,” Carton wrote.
Will Someone Put Palm Out Of Its Misery?
Palm the troubled former PDA maker, that reincarnated itself as troubled smartphone manufacturer, is the subject of much aversion, perhaps even derision by investors; indeed its transformation from a staid old PDA maker whose products never really caught on in the mass market, into handheld internet enabled device manufacturer has been tedious, with few successes to speak of.
The company has been a perennial short sale on the US equity market, but recently investors betting on the company’s stock price falling further have been burned, with Palm shares surging as much as 20 per cent on Wednesday.
Why on earth is there so much interest in a turkey? Merger speculation of course, over the last week rumours have been circulating that Palm is set to be acquired, with the most likely suitor being Chinese computer manufacturing giant Lenovo.
Some analysts believe that Lenovo simply hasn’t got the cash to buy the company, (we’d beg to differ) others speculate that Hewlett Packard with its larger balance sheet is better positioned to do a deal.
Perhaps that is true, and HP does have the scale to easily acquire a company like Palm, but I have yet to hear a defined HP strategy for the smartphone market, in fact I would venture a guess that one has not yet been fully agreed upon and their plan is still in development. I certainly don’t remember a flashy launch of an HP phone during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, or indeed last month’s wireless show, where Sprint unveiled its flash 4G phone built by HTC,
Buying market share through the acquisition of Palm clearly rules out an organic strategy all together for HP at a time when an indigenous phone from Hewlett Packard is forthcoming.
Lenovo on the other hand has been ratcheting up the noise level on its smartphone ambitions since the start of the year, first selling, and then curiously buying back its mobile phone division within the space of a couple of years, and unveiling its own smartphone brand dubbed the LePhone at this year’s CES.
Some analysts argue that Lenovo’s previous acquisitive experience buying IBM’s PC business has left a bitter taste in its mouth, with the purchase price, and resulting profit not justifying that deal.
We’d beg to differ with the Motley Fools of the world. Clearly the IBM deal was transformational for Lenovo, it turned the company from a Chinese hack into a global computer manufacturer with sizeable market share in diverse countries, regions and product segments around the world, something they simply did not have before that deal. The acquisition gave Lenovo the kind of legitimacy that usually takes decades to build, perhaps even a lifetime.
The ThinkPad
Yes Mr. Motley, the Chinese are never afraid to bite of more than they can chew, and if you really believe that mentality features in their business analysis, I’m afraid you would be gravely wrong. C’est faux mon cheri, C’est faux.
Does that mean that Lenovo is likely to swoop in and save the day at Palm, perhaps, if the price is right, but clearly they have developed a strategy for hand held internet enabled devices already. It is completely possible that part of that strategy is based on acquiring market share, but given that only a few players dominate a sector which is growing increasingly sophisticated technologically by the day, it does not seem completely necessary to purchase market share.
Technology is notoriously fickle in terms of tastes and preferences, valuing a company at $0 when it is positioned in a space that over the next few years will be the most brutal end of the market is naive to the say the least. The game is most certainly going to change like the wind in the next few, and Polaroid, Palm is most certainly not.
I’d have to agree with that muppet over at Motley Fool, I’d say the same thing, I don’t believe the merger hype, not for the minute anyway, but I do think a seed has been planted that may well grow, for now however the answer is blowing in the wind.
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