What's Next for 2011: Tablets

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Over the next few weeks, I'm going to put together a couple of posts that look into the crystal ball and make some predictions (i.e. wild guesses) about some trends and developments we might possibly see have an have an effect on on-line marketing in 2011.  Now I wanted to kick things off with a pretty safe bet – the continued rise of tablet devices.

Very first off, a couple of numbers.  Forrester Research forecasts steady and escalating growth of tablet usage in the US by means of 2011 and continuing by way of 2015.  Their forecast takes the numbers from 10.3 million tablet users in 2010 to 26 million by the end of 2011.  Looking further ahead, the number jumps to over 50 million in 2012 and hits 82 million by 2015.

The big consumer electronics corporations definitely appear to believe the growth numbers, as Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba, Vizio and others unveiled their new tablet merchandise at the current Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  Add in the upcoming release of an updated iPad from Apple and you have a marketplace that is ready to take the subsequent step in its evolution.

Tablet devices have been hyped just before (bear in mind the Apple Newton?) but they lastly grabbed mainstream consumer attention in 2010 with the launch of the iPad.  With huge numbers of buyers already used to accessing the web on their intelligent phones, the transition to a bigger tablet mobile device was no longer such a massive leap.  Whilst the iPad jumped in and created the initial market, many people will begin having extra and more devices to select from in 2011.

If you weren't one of the early 2010 adopters of a tablet device, it may perhaps be time to take the plunge.  As an , I'm already sold on the tremendous upside for these devices.  It doesn't matter if you if you believe of them as iPhones on steroids or stripped down laptops, they fill a niche between the intelligent phone and laptop.  With the iPad (and most likely countless of the new tablet devices) you get the mobile capabilities of the smart phone with even more totally functional web access and other software program capabilities that you would expect from a laptop.  It absolutely does not replace the core purpose of a smart phone (generating phone calls), but really can fairly significantly take the location of a laptop for several men and women.

One other area that I haven't heard quite a few men and women speak about is that a tablet might possibly truly be the excellent tool for at present reluctant or even non-web users to get internet.  In specific, I'm thinking about some older Baby Boomers and retirees who may possibly have never come to be totally comfortable making use of a pc (my parents are fantastic examples).  For them, a tablet device could give an extremely user-friendly way to jump on the internet often.  One of the huge benefits of these touch screen devices is that it takes literally no time to turn out to be familiar with how they function.

As an on the internet marketer, becoming familiar with tablet devices is going to turn into far more and even more fundamental in the years ahead.  As additional and more online users get on the net by way of these devices, the most efficient on the internet advertisers will adapt to take advantage of the tablet format and its mobile capabilities.

It appears like for the past five years we have heard that "this is the year" that mobile marketing and advertising will explode.  Certainly the growth of mobile advertising has been extraordinary over the past year, with Google's AdMob ad network reportedly processing approximately 2 billion ad requests per day (this quantity getting quadrupled over the last year).  The enhance in tablet usage is likely to be another massive step in this marketing evolution, as the devices' mobile capabilities combined with a bigger screen permit marketers to create even additional immersive and targeted advertising programs .

So, 1 recommendation for 2011 is to go out and get yourself a tablet.  If you want to be able to take advantage of these new technologies in your marketing programs you need to have to start to have an understanding of how the devices work and how shoppers will be working with them in the future.