While the global demand for tablet PCs emerged in 2010 and will witness growth momentum in 2011, it will not bring competitive impact on the global demand for smartphones because of different uses, according to Asia and Pacific vice president Norm Lo for Research in Motion (RIM) speaking to Digitimes.
However, impact may exist on sales of notebooks and netbooks, Lo indicated.
For users of smartphones, tablet PCs can be a complementary device providing more and better hardware functions and larger screens to enhance efficiency, Lo indicated. Tablet PCs are neither a large smartphones nor small notebook and entail different design concepts and hardware architectures, Lo pointed out.
RIM plans to launch its first tablet PC series, the PlayBook, in the Asia Pacific market in the second quarter of 2011, Lo noted. PlayBook has gained good market response from business users who think it can be integrated with BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry Enterprise Server to help hike their productivity, Lo pointed out.
Article translated by Adam Hwang
