Tablet computers have proven themselves to be a new computer category, as opposed to just oversized smartphones.
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In the personal computer category, Amazon said the Apple MacBook, Nokia Internet Tablet PC and HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook PC were strong sellers.
The popularity of netbooks, owned by 12 percent of U.S. households, and laptops, now owned by most households (58 percent), is helping drive the computer category.
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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.
It not only created the hand-held computer category and the first workable handwriting-recognition system, it also pioneered the whole idea of doing digital tasks -- including e-mail and Internet browsing -- on a device other than the PC.
Bob O'Donnell, vice president of the firm IDG, said he expects the new tablet or slate computer category to result in 3 million to 4 million device sales this year, an amount he said was on par with e-reader sales for 2009.
The second largest category was computer hardware, which was number one lsat year.
This week Intel accelerated its promotion of what it is touting as a new category of computer: the Ultrabook.
The VariDrive will be on show at 2013 CES and has been honored with an Innovations Award in the category of Computer Peripherals.
As a result the revenue growth for computer HDDs, a category including drives for PCs and servers, is expected to decelerate dramatically compared with 2010.
The possibilities for such technology is pretty much endless, but we'd say "nylon stocking that is also, conveniently, a computer" is the first product category worth felling.
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In April it began selling the iPad, the first successful touch-screen tablet computer, and created a market for an entire new category of consumer electronics.
Clothing sales made the biggest breakthrough last year, with apparel and accessories displacing computer hardware and software as the top non-travel category in online retail.
Currently, 86 percent of U.S. households own at least one computer, making it the third most owned CE product category behind televisions and DVD players.
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The category of cyber crime includes fraudulent online shopping activity, computer software service fraud, computer misuse crime, offences linked to computer viruses and spyware and computer hacking.
Notebook computers are the fastest-growing form factor in computer sales--versus desktop computers and servers--and are also AMD's weakest category.
While unit sales of most of Apple's computer lines were down in the fourth quarter of 2002, sales in its "peripheral and other hardware" category, into which the iPod falls, grew by more than 50% versus the year-ago quarter.
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