The global tablet market is expected to grow to $49 billion or to sell 149 million tablet devices by 2015, beating every consumer electronic products after TVs and PCs segments, said a new research.

Tablets are growing at a quicker pace than any other categories and will most likely be the engine of growth for the mobility sector for the next couple of years, according to findings published by research firm Strategy Analytics.

“Tablets have played an integral part of our growth over the last 12 months, and since the time Apple iPad was launched, we've seen this category emerge overnight. Today, it accounts for 10-14 per cent of our total IT sales,” said Ashish Panjabi, chief operating officer of Jacky’s Electronics, the UAE’s leading multi-brand consumer electronics retailer.

“However, the bigger challenge has been securing supplies of stocks as demand far exceeds supply at the moment. Currently, any sort of growth figures for this category would be in triple digits.”

Leading the tablets race at Jacky’s Electronics outlets remains to be the iPad and iPad 2, which enjoys 85 per cent of the tablet market, he added.

Samsung follows second, having had the first mover advantage of being the first major brand to launch its tablet – Galaxy Tab – after Apple. Other brands such as Acer, HP, Dell and Motorola have also introduced their own tablets while BlackBerry’s Playbook is set to launch in the month of June.

“The release of the Apple iPad last year changed the whole user-experience by introducing iOS, a consumer friendly operating system that was custom-built for touch screen devices, for either a smartphone or a tablet,” Panjabi said.

“This year, a variety of tablets are already available in the market which are based on various operating systems such as Android (developed by Google), and BlackBerry’s Tablet OS.”

He added that the race to be a leader in the tablet business comes down to which brand offers a total user can experience that includes a combination of hardware, software, Apps and aesthetics.  Unlike many other technology products, specifications are not the most important to buyers.

“Apple has done well till date because they manage the whole eco-system of hardware and software whilst managing a stringent set of controls over what Apps appear on their App Store.  Many brands have now realised this and this is why we’ve seen such a rapid development in operating systems for tablets as well as various form factors that are starting to emerge,” Panjabi said.

“Many business users may also start adopting tablets as brands like BlackBerry and HP have a very strong enterprise base and they would be surely designing their tablets keeping this customer segment in mind.”

“HP have already announced that their WebOS operating system will now become available on all of its product categories particularly laptops, tablets and printers,” Panjabi concluded. – TradeArabia News Service