Prediction for the top selling tablets in 2011

Richard Fieldhouse (12/05/11)

OK, so the year has already started - quite some time ago, I suppose - but most gadget sales will probably be in the run-up to Christmas, so in creating this list of the likeliest tablet PCs, there is still some element of prediction involved. Well, lets be honest - guesswork.

The list is in the form of a top ten - because it's kind of traditional, and because we marketing types rarely get beyond ten - in fact we're a bit wobbly above five, but here goes anyway.

[Clicking on a tablet's title will get you to the appropriate tab to see its specifications on our tablet comparison table.]

10) Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9

Samsung gained plenty of good experience getting Android to go properly with the original 7" Tab, so the new version should be pretty reliable - and it may benefit from a few repeat sales. They stand a good chance of being able to dominate this in-between space: smaller than the iPad and larger than the almost-pocketable 7" tablets. On the downside, it looks likely that they will repeat their main mistake made with the earlier tablet: expecting people to buy accessories which only work with their special tablet connector.

9) Acer Iconia A500 (10")

This tablet came out hot on the heels of the not-so-well-received Motorola Xoom and my guess ("prediction") is that the Xoom will just get squeezed out of the top ten. This Iconia is cheaper and it comes better set up for memory cards and USB flash memory.  This, and avoiding the negative publicity which comes with being the first tablet to market using the new, and not quite ready Honeycomb version of Android, should make put the Iconia ahead of the Xoom in the end.

8) HTC Flyer (7")

This tablet uses the older Froyo version of Android. It's better tested, though, and the Flyer should put in a pretty polished performance when it finally arrives. The price currently looks a bit steep but here's hoping it drops a bit over the next few weeks. The tablet also has a unique selling point (USP): it comes with a capacitive stylus which allows you to annotate pages and keep a range of highlighted notes. It should also come in handy for presentations, we hope. There have been rumours that the stylus could be sold separately, but doing this would probably scupper the Flyer's chances.

7) RIM Playbook

This is again a 7" tablet and cones with its own unique platform - QNX. To be honest, QNX is probably a bad thing, even though it has been quite well reviewed. Who wants to be using the third most popular tablet platform? In addition, QNX, currently only supports access to Email and contacts when used in conjunction with a Blackberry mobile phone. This probably means that the Playbook will only be bought by Blackberry owners. Conversely, many Blackberry owners will likely buy this tablet ahead of the alternatives out of brand loyalty.

6) Samsung Galaxy Tab 7

I know this tablet is old hat - having come out in October 2010 and running on the older Froyo platform - but it does have quite a few sales already in the bag. And it's the tablet I'm using to write this article now! It's small - which might be good or bad depending on your point of view - and it's also got a very unique connector - which must be bad in anybody's book. But it is the first tablet after the iPad to work properly and it does come with the rather lovely Swype keyboard.