This outlook is how J.P. Morgan Research analyst Mark Moskowitz see it. According to Moskowitz, other tablet manufacturers could hit an oversupply bubble during the second half of 2011 because they are unable to sell their devices.
J.P. Morgan estimates that Apple and its rivals would manufacture about 81 million tablets this year. However, Moskowitz foresees that only 47.9 million tablets would actually ship this year, causing an oversupply among many companies but he thinks the iPad would not suffer that fate.
“In our view, the technical and form factor improvements of the iPad 2 stand to make it tougher for the first generation of competitive offerings to play catch-up, meaning actual shipments could fall well short of plan,” Moskowitz wrote in his investor report.
The oversupply of tablets, if it does happen, would not only hurt the makers of tablet computers, but also manufacturers of individual hardware components such as touch screens, processors, and graphics chips.
Among the iPad 2 competitors that are set to be shipped in the coming months include the Samsung 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab (in addition to the recently-demoed Galaxy Tab 10.1, as seen in the picture), the BlackBerry PlayBook, and the HP TouchPad. Those and many other tablets will join the Motorola Xoom, which made its retail debut two weeks ago.
