AT&T Inc.’s emerging devices president, who oversees the carrier’s relationship with Apple Inc., said tablet computers costing as much as $1,000 might soon make many laptops obsolete.
“You’re going to see those 10-inch pieces of glass become full-on computers,” Glenn Lurie said in an interview this month in Atlanta. He said he expected there to be a variety of tablet computers costing $300 to $1,000 in the next five years. The Apple iPad ranges in price from $499 to $829.
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Sales of tablet devices probably will grow to 23 percent of the U.S. computer market by 2015, from about 6 percent this year and less than 1 percent in 2009, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Starting in 2012, tablets will outsell netbooks, and by 2014, more consumers will use tablets than will use netbooks,” Epps, referring to the smaller, less-powerful laptop-style computers, said in a report this month.
