ABI Research has put out its latest projections on the lay of the land for smartphones and tablets worldwide in 2013: it says that there will be 1.4 billion smartphones, and 268 million tablets in active use this year, with Android keeping its lead in handsets and iOS continuing to dominate in tablets. Microsoft and BlackBerry will continue to remain in the game in smartphones with small shares of the market — but big enough to keep developers interested. In other words, it won’t be a two-horse race, ABI tells me: “Maybe a race of two horses and two ponies.”

What’s different about ABI’s figures compared to, say, those of IDC, Strategy Analytics or Gartner, is that ABI focuses on the number of devices in active use, rather than the number of devices getting shipped for sale. And in that regard, ABI says that Microsoft’s Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 will be small, but still competitive enough to stay in the game.

By the end of 2013, there will be 45 million Windows Phone devices, and 20 million BlackBerry 10 devices in use worldwide, ABI predicts These respectively work out to 3.2% and 1.4% shares of the market. That may sound like peanuts compared with Android’s 798 million handsets (57% share) or iOS’s 294 million devices (21% share). But this will continue to remain just enough to keep a critical mass of developers interested in the platform — significant because apps will continue to be one of the main drivers for why consumers buy phones, says ABI.

“The greatest fear for both Microsoft and BlackBerry is that the initial sales of their smartphones will disappoint and thereby kill off the developer interest, which then would effectively close the window of opportunity on further sales success,” writes Aapo Markkanen, ABI analyst. “Our view is that the installed bases of this scale would be large enough to keep these two in the game.”

This should come as mixed news to both Nokia (the dominant handset maker on the Windows Phone platform) and BlackBerry. It’s a sign of hope that things can turn around, but given the momentum of Android right now, it could be some time before those market shares move into double-digit percentages. That, in effect, means more hard work and investment keeping investors patient and developers interested over time.

“Based on our current shipment forecasts, we don’t see the installed base of either BB or WP reaching the double-digits within the next five years,” Markkanen told TechCrunch. “It’ll be a slow climb, since if they both stay in the game they’ll be kind of eating into each other’s success. It won’t be that much-touted two-horse race, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a three- or four-horse race either. Maybe a race of two horses and two ponies.”

ABI has also put out some figures on how it sees the active user market in tablets in 2013.

While IDC earlier today noted that in tablets just over half of the devices shipped in the last quarter were iOS devices, and Android makers accounted for most of the rest, ABI’s figures indicate that the installed, active base continues to remain largely Apple’s to lose. iPad devices accounted for 62% of the market, or just over 166 million devices, and only 75 million Android tablets. There will be just 5.5 million Windows-powered tablets in use this year, it notes.

The window of opportunity for companies like Microsoft and BlackBerry to extend use of their platforms comes down to growth rates for smartphones and tablets. These will be 44% for handsets and 125% for tablets this year compared to 2012, ABI says.

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Blackberry’s future is the tech debate du jour, with pundits on either side promising either a BB10 renaissance or a slow-motion tailspin. While the jury was still out, we had a few moments to speak with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins about RIM’s way forward and where BB10 was going to put the company when it launches.

He was unsurprisingly forthright and more than accommodating even when we asked him the questions any BB fan would ask today: Why should I buy a new Blackberry device?

TC: In this interview we wanted to see what was in store for the consumer, what RIM is doing to maintain the energy that a lot of the BlackBerry users currently have, especially at work or in academia. What do you see as the best way forward for those folks?

Thorsten Heins: What we are doing right now is, if you look at the installed base, specifically in enterprise, corporate and consumers worldwide, there is still a lot of phones running BlackBerry 5, mainly in Asia-Pacific. So we are still working on a program to upgrade the installed base to BlackBerry 7, which from today’s view and perspective still is competitive, and I think an exciting platform.

So we are absolutely working on our consumer and enterprise base to get us to BlackBerry 7, which is a real upgraded experience compared to 5 and 6, and to a certain extent also 6. That’s the first thing we are doing.

Second is we are working on the BB10 platform to be launched in the first quarter next year. And this is not, as I said, based on a QWERTY device, which is a device type we dominate today. This will get us back into the full touch game, and this is where we will fight hard in the U.S. to regain market share and convince consumers that, well, BlackBerry is not just a great platform for productivity or for business people; it’s a great platform for consumers as well.

We will specifically talk to those consumers that are constantly on the move or need to stay ahead and introduce them to BB10. Given the ease of adoptions for this platform it will be a great gaming experience, a great media experience, and a great content experience.

TC: It seems like BlackBerry itself has always been very specific about the email side of things. Is your vision to bring the company into more direct competition with the iOS/Android situation, or is email still paramount?

Heins: The way I look at this is that email certainly is a core element of BlackBerry, but I would put a bigger frame around this. I think this is about being extremely socially connected.

In today’s world, email is not the only way to communicate anymore: it is Twittering, Facebook, BBMing, and other means of social communication networking.

So what it really is about, I think, is to put a different frame around it and say “We keep you extremely well-connected through your various communication channels and we are making it really easy to deal with and to manage and to respond to notifications.”

TC: In terms of BB10, are you at all concerned that the time involved in releasing this update is going to affect things negatively, and especially with 7-inch iPad rumors swirling?

Heins: First, those are rumors. But as for BB10 I think this is not just a product launch, this is a whole new platform launch with a really new BlackBerry experience. So from that perspective, am I to a certain extent disappointed that we have that delay in BlackBerry 10? Yes, I would say yes.

But on the other side, I just want this to be the best user experience, the best compelling quality that people see on a BlackBerry, and I will not sacrifice this. I just want this experience to be fantastic. And that’s what we are working towards.

So knowing what we are building our BlackBerry 10 on, the product, the capabilities, the empowerment it actually gives to the people that use it, I have no concerns about our success. We will be successful.

Also if you look at the channels that we are serving, basically through the carriers, they see not just the risk anymore, I think they see reality coming that there’s a duopoly of suppliers they can work with and that they can source from right now.

They have a huge installed base of BlackBerry customers out there, they want to protect that installed base. They want them to be successful too. We get a lot of endorsement from carriers and the carrier partners globally on BlackBerry 10. So I am confident that we will make a good appearance in the rest of the world, but I am also confident that we are actually in a position to fight back in the U.S. based on the BlackBerry 10 portfolio.

TC: I guess it seems like people need a pep talk. So what would you say to the folks who say, “RIM isn’t thinking about us specifically, us early adopters, us hardcore BB users, we haven’t put down our BlackBerry since the late 90s.” What will you say to them?

Heins: The pep talk is that we will continue to make the people that use a BlackBerry successful. That is really the DNA. It just allowed people to manage their life and have a very comfortable way of communicating. And with BlackBerry 10, we will take this to a whole new level.

It’s not just about you communicating with somebody else; it’s about actually communicating with the whole network around you. So the strength in this whole social network and the strength is also in other elements that are not particularly BlackBerry elements, like gaming, because the platform supports it. We will not develop our own games, but the platform we are building allows game developers to program and to deliver really fantastic-performing games.

I myself, I use PlayBook a lot to play racing games because I can look at PlayBook from a performance perspective and say, with the highest rendering requirement, with the highest load on the graphic unit, is it a good performance, is it a good experience? And it is.

TC: And how many BlackBerrys do you carry around with you?

Heins: I have a PlayBook I use for work. I have a PlayBook that I use privately. I am on a 9900 right now. And I am using a kind of an ultra device for L-series right now, for BB10.

TC: You don’t have a secret Google Galaxy Nexus hidden in there somewhere?

Heins: What I always do is try be connected with the industry and know what’s going on there. I always have competitive devices on my desk that I check out that I work with, just to really understand what’s going on. I think this is just a good way of understanding what the industry is and where it’s headed. So we constantly do this.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Chalk another one up for the mobile revolution: There were 56 million tablets purchased worldwide in 2011, but a new report from Forrester Research predicts that number will explode in the years ahead: its researchers say that there will be 375 million tablets sold by 2016, representing a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent, and that by 2016 there will be 760 million tablets in use overall.

That will still put tablets a ways behind PCs — there will be 2 billion PCs in use in 2016. But combined with new products like frames (essentially docks for tablets to amp up their functionality), Forrester says that tablets will gradually become the computing device of choice among consumers — especially among those in emerging markets, whose first home computing device will more likely be a tablet than a desktop or laptop PC.

Apple, which effectively created the tablet market with the launch of its iPad two years ago, and has been setting the bar for what to make ever since, has seen some reduction in its tablet market share over the last year or two as more competitors have launched products.

But Forrester predicts it will manage to hold on to its lead going forward as the market’s “clear leader”, in the words of Forrester researcher Frank Gillett, who also penned a blog post summarizing some of the bigger points in the report.

Part of Apple’s strategy to stay on top will be to target newer markets like the enterprise segment — which will represent one third of all tablet buyers by 2016 — and consumers in countries like China. Meanwhile, Android will actually see a net decline in its installed base of tablets by 2015, with Microsoft also gaining ground in the process.

(Indeed, another analyst firm, IDC, in March predicted that by 2016 Android tablet shipments will outnumber those of iPad shipments. Shipments are not necessarily sales, however, and does not take into account the size of the installed base.)

In particular, Forrester says Google’s network of Android device makers and the ecosystem around them “will struggle” to keep up with Apple in the premium-priced range. Furthermore, Forrester doesn’t see the various issues that have surrounded Android up to now — among them device fragmentation, software support and a variety of Android flavors — improving in the years ahead. (What’s interesting is that Forrester doesn’t seem to think that these same factors will affect the installed base of Android smartphones, which will continue to grow.)

The other big challenge for Android, Forrester notes, is the proliferation of forked Android device makers. While we still have no news of Amazon launching a Kindle Fire product outside the U.S., Forrester is very bullish on how it, and others making forked Android tablets, will fare.

While Forrester says that Samsung and low-priced tablet makers will “stay the course” with Android, we will increasingly see others turn to Microsoft’s new tablet OS, Windows 8, for their tablet ambitions. However, that will not really begin in earnest until 2014 because it will take “most of 2013 for the Microsoft ecosystem to create a fully capable Windows Metro experience for customers.” Once it gets going, “Microsoft will be a significant player, but one chasing a leader with a multi-year head start.”

Although tablets, by and large, are not as functional as the average PC, Forrester says that we will see a new class of consumer electronics emerge that will fill that gap: “frames” (effectively docks), which Forrester predicts will become a common way to give tablets more features, more power and link them up to other devices, like TVs, to use them to consume content. “Frames will become a new form of stationary PC, rising in volume even as laptop growth decays, redefining the desktop PC market as the stationary PC market,” Gillett writes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The tablet era has just begun, but Forrester Research is already predicting tablet sales in the U.S. will overtake netbook sales by 2012, and desktop sales by 2015. At the Untethered conference today in New York City, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps laid out her projections comparing tablet sales to netbooks, laptops, and desktops. She expects 3.5 million tablets (including the iPad and other tablets) to be sold this year, growing to 20.4 million in 2015. Meanwhile, she expects desktop sales to drop from 18.7 million units in 2010 to 15.7 million units in 2015.

As a percentage of overall PC sales, tablets will grow from 6 percent this year to 18 percent in 2012 (when netbooks are estimated to account for 17 percent of sales. The next year, in 2013, tablet sales are projected to outstrip desktop unit sales, 21 percent to 20 percent. By 2015, tablets will make up 23 percent of PC sales in the U.S., while desktops will be 18 percent and netbooks will be 17 percent. Only laptops will sell more in the U.S., with a 42 percent market share.

The big question is how much of the tablet market can Apple capture? It has already sold 2 million iPads, and could easily blow past Forrester’s 3.5 million estimate for this year all by itself. It is not stretch for it to get to 20 million by 2015 either. So is there room in this market for other tablets, or will Forrester need to increase its estimates?

These projections are for unit sales, not total revenues, but still the expectation that there will be more tablets sold in five years than any other type of computer is stunning. By 2015, the cumulative number of people using tablets will be 59 million, according to Rotman, which will be larger than the installed base of netbooks (but still just a fraction of the installed base of desktops and laptops). On a global basis, IDC also sees tablets and e-readers driving more growth than netbooks. Looks like it is time to stick a fork in netbooks.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch