Iria

Hold on to your keyboard. Laptop computer screens that flip around to become convertible tablet PCs could be an increasingly common sight within the next three years.

With manufacturing prices dropping and Microsoft touting tablet PCs, shipments of the products are expected to hit 9.7 million units by 2008. That's up 708 percent from the 1.2 million units expected to ship this year, according to a forecast by market researchers at IDC. Convertible notebooks are expected to make up the majority of those shipments, IDC said.

The projected number of tablets is small compared with the overall number of notebooks. After all, 62.5 million notebooks are expected to ship this year, and that number is forecast by IDC to climb to 100.3 million in 2008.

If every one of those tablet PCs that ship in 2008 were actually a convertible notebook, fewer than one out of every 10 notebooks shipped would have tablet capabilities. Still, that's a big jump from the less than 2 percent share of notebook sales tablets now have.
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Read More / Source: News.com