450 Million Tablets to be Sold in 2016

There are lots of reasons why tablet sales are growing so fast. 

Average sales price of tablets are falling. The average selling price of an 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 average selling prices over the next few years. 

Tablets also are cannibalizing the e-reader market, which sold more than 20 million devices in 2011. 

Tablets also vastly improve upon the media consumption experience, and as it turns out, that has become a primary reason for using a computing appliance connected to the Internet. 

There also are other markets, including business and education markets. Enterprises buy about $420 billion worth of devices and hardware every year, for example. 

U.S. kindergarten to 12th grade schools also spent about $5.5 billion on textbooks in 2010, and college students spend hundreds of dollars per semester on textbooks they'll only use once. Those markets also are candidates for tablet disruptiion, Business Insider argues.