Tablet computers will eat into the miniature laptop market by 40 million units in 2012, the head of a Taiwanese research institute has said. Tablets and Ultrabooks will "erode the market share of netbooks, or mini laptops, in 2012," said Shen Chu-san, director of the Institute for Information Industry's Market Intelligence Centre (MIC), a government-funded think tank, Xinhua reported.
However, "sales of traditional notebook computers will not be affected by tablets and Ultrabooks, as the latter two have no effect on traditional laptops", Shen said.
Ultrabooks, as a new trend of personal computer development, consume low power and are thin and light with long standby time.
The number of tablets to be sold globally in the first half of 2012 is expected to reach 29.4 million, up 42 percent year-on-year.
