No Significant Market For Windows Tablets

Before we look a bit closer at the numbers, Gartner said that iOS will drop from a 83.9% share in 2010 to 47.1% in 2015, Android will climb from 14.2% to 38.6%, MeeGo will climb from 0.6% to 1.0%, WebOS jump from 0 to 3.0% and QNX will improve from 0 to 10.0%.

It always puzzles me how analysts can be brave enough to make 5-year forecasts and publish market share percentages in that detail, especially in such quickly evolving market segments. Android has not seen a single successful tablet yet, we have no idea how WebOS will play out and we have not seen Windows 8 tablets pc yet - which does not matter, since Windows 8 tablets are irrelevant anyway (they aren't mentioned in this research.) And what's that number about MeeGo? MeeGo more significant than Windows 8? Sure.    

Let me ask: How credible are these forecasts? I get it, it is a forecast based on today's trends, but come on, a tablet shipment forecast until 2015? Seriously? Here is my idea: Apple will terribly screw up in 2013 when Google will find the key to unlock a mysterious new computing power and release its own tablets with rollable displays. What would that impact market shares?

Personally, I doubt that Gartner has the crystal ball that can predict the overall economy even one year from now, which questions the overall credibility of such reports - especially for tablets, when we don't even know if this is a market that can work for any PC manufacturer or just Apple. Can we return to common sense, please?