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Why It's Prime Time to Get Tablet-Savvy

Judy Mottl | Date: 01-07-11 | Comments

There's a clear consumer appetite and demand for tablets as Apple iPad sales figures prove. But will the same demand come on the enterprise side? It's time for IT to figure that out.

Table of Contents:

Why It's Prime Time to Get Tablet-Savvy

When the tablet hit the mainstream thanks to Apple's iPad, it was, appropriately, deemed the latest snazziest consumer gadget next to the iPhone.

And yet, at the time, pundits once again proclaimed that tablets weren't a neat fit for the enterprise environment for many reasons: Lighter, more powerful laptops can do anything a business user needs, another device meant more security work, and a tablet presents another potential channel where critical data could go missing or be compromised.

But that perspective is changing. IT organizations that haven't begun investigating the potential need, and benefit, of tablets should take heed.

Why? For one thing, vendors are trying to beat each other to the punch in bringing better, more secure and more feature-rich enterprise-tailored devices to market this year. Second, end users proved with the enterprise smartphone invasion that they can be a force in bringing new tools into play without IT's seal of approval. And, third, to use a familiar auto marketing slogan, the new generation of tablets is not your grandfather's tablet device.

All those forces at play will result in big sales, according to research firm Gartner. Predictions are that 54.8 million tablets will be sold this year, and that number will spike to 208 million in three years. That's a big growth spurt given that just under 20 million tablets were sold in 2010.

On the vendor side, everyone and anyone is revamping old tablets, developing new tablets and building new OS platforms all in the name of getting a nice chunk of that revenue pie.

This list includes everyone from Research In Motion (RIM) to Dell and HP, as well as smartphone makers such as Samsung and LG. And not to be ignored, of course, is Microsoft.

On the enterprise front, though, the big news is what RIM's pending PlayBook will deliver. Details have been scant, but reports say RIM claims it will have the security most companies require and expect when integrating a new device into the IT landscape.

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