Sanford Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon on Thursday issued a 49-page paper focused on the current and future markets for consumer tablets. Rasgon credits Apple with birthing the market, and he believes the iPad will continue to dominate indefinitely, noting that Apple managed to sell 19.5 million iPads in its first year of availability — twice the amount of netbooks and three times the number of iPhones sold in the same period of time. With its iPad business alone, “Apple has created a company the size of EMC in one year,” Rasgon writes. Like countless analysts before him, Rasgon sees the tablet market exploding over the next few years, with annual sales growing to 215 million units by the end of 2015. “We have never seen such a high purchasing intent for a new category in the past,” Rasgon notes, referencing a Bernstein survey indicating 20% of consumers plan to purchase a tablet in the next 12 months. He also says PC vendors don’t have to be overly nervous, since there will be minimal PC cannibalization resulting from the coming tablet boom.
