iPad sales drive unprecedented tablet growth for semiconductor market

IHS forecasts that sales of semiconductors for use in media tablets are expected to grow to $18.2billion in 2014 – up from $2.6bn in 2010, the year Apple introduced the iPad. The analyst believes that by 2014 sales of semiconductors for tablets will only be exceeded by mobile handsets, mobile pcs and desktop pcs. In contrast, media tablet semiconductor sales in 2010 ranked lower than the relatively small scale applications of workstations, USB flash drives, mobile wireless broadband, wireless access devices and flat panel monitors. "The speed of the media tablet's rise from near insignificance to top tier prominence is unprecedented in the history of the global semiconductor industry," said Dale Ford, head of electronics & semiconductor research for IHS. "Driven primarily by Apple's iPad, the media tablet in four years is expected to scale semiconductor heights that took more than a decade for other products to attain, such as notebook pcs and cellphones. This meteoric ascension will have major repercussions for the global semiconductor industry, as it realigns to accommodate the fast growth and vast size of the media tablet market." IHS forecasts that mobile handsets will become the world's largest semiconductor application in 2012, for the first time ever exceeding mobile pcs as the leading chip segment.