As Tablet Sales Reach 400 Million Units in 2016, Will Apple iPad Keep Lead?

When one includes Android and other tablets as well as e-readers, nearly 100 million tablets were sold in 2011. But 400 million units will be sold by 2016, Business Insider predicts, 400 times the number sold in 2011. 

Through the first six months of the year, tablet prices have seen a pretty steep drop off, despite the iPad's continued dominance. The average selling price of the iPad is down more than 11 percent from its 2011 price. The introduction of mini tablets, beginning with the Kindle Fire, disrupted the pricing dynamics of the market and will drive the huge drop in ASP over the next few years, BI says. 

Tablets are poor substitute for PCs if you are trying to run data intensive spreadsheets, but they vastly improve upon the media consumption experience, BI says. That is one reason some argue that tablets are a new product category of computing device, not a "replacement" for PCs, as such. As it turns out, what people want to do on computing appliances has changed over the last couple of decades. They work less, they consume media more.