Has anyone seen any unit numbers of Tablet PC sa

[Dennis Rice]

Has anyone seen any unit numbers of Tablet PC sales? I see general statements about shortages on units, delays in fullfilling orders, etc., but no real unit sales results. The Tablet PC Buzz shows quite a few more HP TC1000 people, but I'm not sure that is an indicator. It looks like HP is selling more units, but that could purely be because they were geared up to produce more!

[wpmann]

I've seen some general numbers, but specifics are hard to come by. Here is some info I've pulled from recent news stories:

Toshiba would not disclose sales figures but said 11 percent of its business-to-business products are Tablet PCs. The firm added that 46 percent of its "thin and light" segment products were Tablets. Over 100 companies are seeking evaluation models from the Japanese giant.

The company (Toshiba) has boosted production by 100 percent or slightly more, Simons said. However, its tablet PCs--though obtainable through its own sales arm--aren't always available from its sales partners. And while manufacturers prefer to have orders to fill versus having excess inventory on hand, at least some customers have grown unhappy waiting for their orders to arrive from Toshiba.

Meanwhile, sales of tablet PCs also have gotten off to a good start in Europe, according to a recent report by London-based Context. Context said Microsoft tablet PCs garnered about 1 percent of notebook sales in Europe during the fourth quarter, a relatively large figure for that category.

Some industry watchers have been pessimistic about the prospects for tablets, noting high prices and the fact that similar formats have previously failed to catch on. In November, analyst firm Gartner Dataquest predicted that Tablet PC shipments would reach 425,000 units in 2003 - just 1.2 percent of worldwide notebook shipments.

However, experts close to the Tablet PC business said that prediction could fall short. "Manufacturers' original estimates might have been low," said Mark Erickson of Phoenix Technologies, which makes Bios software for the devices. Erickson predicts Tablet PC sales of up to 750,000 this year.

[wpmann]

I've seen some general numbers, but specifics are hard to come by. Here is some info I've pulled from recent news stories:

Toshiba would not disclose sales figures but said 11 percent of its business-to-business products are Tablet PCs. The firm added that 46 percent of its "thin and light" segment products were Tablets. Over 100 companies are seeking evaluation models from the Japanese giant.

The company (Toshiba) has boosted production by 100 percent or slightly more, Simons said. However, its tablet PCs--though obtainable through its own sales arm--aren't always available from its sales partners. And while manufacturers prefer to have orders to fill versus having excess inventory on hand, at least some customers have grown unhappy waiting for their orders to arrive from Toshiba.

Meanwhile, sales of tablet PCs also have gotten off to a good start in Europe, according to a recent report by London-based Context. Context said Microsoft tablet PCs garnered about 1 percent of notebook sales in Europe during the fourth quarter, a relatively large figure for that category.

Some industry watchers have been pessimistic about the prospects for tablets, noting high prices and the fact that similar formats have previously failed to catch on. In November, analyst firm Gartner Dataquest predicted that Tablet PC shipments would reach 425,000 units in 2003 - just 1.2 percent of worldwide notebook shipments.

However, experts close to the Tablet PC business said that prediction could fall short. "Manufacturers' original estimates might have been low," said Mark Erickson of Phoenix Technologies, which makes Bios software for the devices. Erickson predicts Tablet PC sales of up to 750,000 this year.