A new report from Citigroup out today says that it’s not too late for Microsoft to have a “meaningful share” of the tablet market, even though its first tablet computer won’t ship until mid-2012 at the earliest. Citi estimates that around 75 million tablets will ship in 2013, but there’s still plenty of room for a Microsoft tablet to gain a foothold, even if it’s not “a raving success.”
Has Citi gone mad? Or is it right on target? Let us know what you think in this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.
“Microsoft can have a meaningful share of the market in 2013 and beyond. Of course this is dependent upon the company’s ability to deliver a competitive operating system on partner hardware that is priced competitively,” the group said in a note to clients.
It also said that Microsoft would have the enterprise market in its favor, but the user interface would the “make or break” element for the company.
Business Insider, reporting on Citi’s estimates, seemed to agree, and cited a number of reasons for doing so. These included the expense of the current tablet computers out today, the fact that “Android tablets are not very good,” (their words, not ours), the legal challenges facing Android, Microsoft’s huge army of .NET developers, and, as noted above, access to the enterprise market. More on those reasons can be found here.
This isn’t the first time we asked this question, mind you. But we’re curious if opinion has changed over the past several months, especially now that we know Microsoft is planning to port Windows to ARM-based chips and is ready to demo its tablet OS for the first time. Earlier this year, 295 of you told us that yes, it’s way too late for a Microsoft tablet, but 131 said “no” it was not. (53 were undecided).
Let’s see what you think now!
Do you agree with Citi? Share your thoughts about the Microsoft tablet’s chances in this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.
Image credit: Reuters, Mario Anzuoni
