Apple iPad did to the tablet PC market what the iPhone did to the smartphone market: re-invented it.
FORBES: Apple To Dominate Tablet Market Through 2015, Google Takes Smartphones
In the personal computer category, Amazon said the Apple MacBook, Nokia Internet Tablet PC and HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook PC were strong sellers.
Apple is already likely the tablet PC market leader.
FORBES: Apple On Track For $1 Billion Of iPad Revenue IN ITS FIRST QUARTER
One exception to the diminishing returns of e-reader launches will no doubt be Apple's long-awaited tablet PC--if that multi-purpose slate can even be called a reader--which is expected to be revealed later this month.
The fall has been triggered by concerns over future growth of the firm, not least due to the success of rivals such as Samsung which have increased their share of the smartphone and tablet PC markets, which Apple used to dominate.
Amazon.com could jump into the tablet PC market to compete with the Apple iPad in time for the holiday shopping season, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair asserts in a research note this morning.
FORBES: Amazon: Analyst Says Evidence Mounts That Tablet Is Coming
According to Apple, the first iPad is the best-selling tablet PC ever, claiming more than 90% of the tablet market.
While Samsung managed to ship more smartphones and portable PCs than Apple in 2012, Apple led all in tablet shipments, was eighth in portable PC shipments, and fifth overall in desktop PC shipments.
ENGADGET: IDC: connected device shipments up 29.1 percent in 2012, smartphones and tablets rule
The leading smartphone and tablet PC makers, such as Samsung and Apple, rely more on operating systems such as Android and iOS, rather than Microsoft's Windows, which has enjoyed a dominance in the traditional PC market.
This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software.
It took Apple to realize the potential of the tablet, Asus (with its Eee PC) to blow up the netbook category, and MySpace and Facebook to create stable, mass-market social networks.
Rumors have been swirling that PC operating system heavyweights Apple and Microsoft are developing forays into the world of tablet computing.
Apple 's ( AAPL - news - people ) long-awaited tablet PC--if that multi-purpose slate can even be called a reader--which is expected to be revealed later this month.
In the personal computer category, Amazon said the Apple MacBook, Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) Internet Tablet PC and HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook PC were strong sellers.
Do we really think a tablet PC from HP or Dell will be better than the iPad and therefore really hurt Apple?
That Apple is looking to upstage the PC giant becomes evident when we consider that Microsoft is launching its own tablet PC, the Surface Pro, in a couple of days.
FORBES: Apple's New iPad Takes On Microsoft As Tablets Nab PC Sales
Samsung also doubled its share of the tablet PC market to 15.1% in the last three months of 2012, while Apple saw its share slide to 43.6% from 51.7%, despite seeing a jump in sales, data released by IDC earlier this year showed.
But in a week packed with the furious skirmishes of a post-PC ground war, Apple is most likely refurbishing its computers and shaving a few inches off its tablet.
ENGADGET: Editorial: Turning point for the tortoise and the hare
But put it on a new tablet PC and you have a paradigm shift, at least for Microsoft, as significant as what Apple did when it released the iPad, including the ability to run touch-screen apps designed specifically for mobile devices.
"We see Windows 8 as opportunity for all the PC manufacturers to reclaim the huge ground that they have lost to Apple and some of the other Android tablet makers, " Chris Green, technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe, told the BBC.
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