Amazon tablet good news for DRAM market

This is good news for the electronics industry and in particular the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market. According to market analyst, IHS iSuppli, the increase in demand for tablets in 2011 is already projected to increase by 795% on last year. IHS forecasts tablet DRAM for 2011 to reach 333.7million gigabits – almost nine times the 37.3m gigabits in 2010. And it believes as tablets gain prominence in the DRAM market, tablets and smartphones will outship pcs, originally the DRAM market's strongest customer, by 50m units. Demand will leap to 1.1billion gigabits in 2012 and continue to rise for the next four years, reaching 5.8bn gigabits by 2015, IHS reports. The iPad dominates the tablet market, but a competitive device from Amazon could present a serious challenge if it provides a broad range of content, such as music, games, movies, tv programmes, books and Android apps. IHS suggests that while Amazon's tablet, which will run on Nvidia's upcoming quad core processor, couldn't necessarily compete on hardware specs, the world's largest book retailer could compete by providing a 'satisfactory customer experience'. All this is good news for the DRAM market, with IHS estimating that tablet shipments will reach 63.2m units in 2011, up from 17.5m in 2010 – and will hit 113.9m units next year.