When PCs become trucks: IDC projects 2015 as Tablet/PC inflection point

Market research firm IDC released new data today forecasting that tablet sales will grow “58.7% year-over-year in 2013 reaching 229.3 million units, up from 144.5 million units last year.”

With the PC market on track to see negative growth for the second year in a row, IDC predicts we’ll see more tablet shipments than portable computer shipments this year. More importantly, IDC predicts that 2015 will mark the first year tablets will outsell both notebook and desktop computers.

While Apple has been at the forefront of the tablet revolution, the current market expansion has been increasingly fueled by low-cost Android devices. In 2013, the worldwide average selling price (ASP) for tablets is expected to decline -10.8% to $381. In comparison, the ASP of a PC in 2013 is nearly double that at $635. IDC expects tablet prices to decline further, which will allow vendors to deliver a viable computing experience into the hands of many more people at price points the PC industry has strived to meet for years.

Apple CEO has addressed the threat of iPads and other tablets cannibalizing Macintosh sales, but cited the vast amount of Windows PC sales available for cannibalization as reason not to worry.

Steve Jobs notably compared PCs to trucks used for heavy use in 2010 at AllThingsD’s D8 conference in 2010:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm, but as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”

Perhaps Tim Cook will offer more insight on Apple’s vision of tablet versus PC sales going forward at tonight’s D11 conference which we’ll be covering live.

It took 27 years to get to 200 million PCs sold a year. It has taken 3 years for tablets to accomplish the same feat.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) May 28, 2013