Research company predicts US tablet market will reach 71.6 million units by 2018

The tablet market is growing at an incredible rate all around the country. Many analysts and research firms have already found that more and more consumers and business users are replacing aging computers with tablets. Many of the business users that are getting tablets are getting these devices as their first mobile computing product rather than replacing a notebook computer.

A company called Transparency Market Research has published a new study looking at the tablet PC market in the United States. According to the company, tablet PCs shipped 34.2 million units in 2012. The company is predicting that the tablet PC market within the United States will reach 71.6 million units by 2018. That would give the tablet market in the US a growth rate of 13.1% between 2012 and 2018.

The company says that in 2010 the iPad held the largest share of the tablet market accounting for more than 80% of the US market. The company predicts that Android-based tablets will pass the iPad by 2017. The most popular tablets currently have screens ranging between 9.6-inches and 11-inches with more than 25 million tablets in this range sold in 2012.

However, the company says that the popularity of this large-screen tablet segment is declining. As the popularity of the larger screen tablets declines, the popularity of tablets with screens eight-inches and smaller is growing significantly. I'd wager this has a lot to do with the large and ever-increasing number of seven-inch Android-powered tablets that continue to come to market at low prices. The company also predicts that mobile workers will continue to adopt tablets at an impressive rate with a growth rate of 18.1% from 2012 to 2018.

[via Transparency Market Research]