Launch of Apple Tablet will boost Tablet PC sales

The number of Apple tablet stories keeps growing. Today we have another round courtesy of an analyst report from Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster. MacRumors and a handful of other blogs and publications are following the story. Let’s not forget though, these stories are in large part based on rumors and conjecture–rumors that up to this point have not proven so accurate.

Anyway, after a bit of reading and reflection, I decided to add to the mix and come up with my own Apple tablet prediction that’s actually more about the Tablet PC than any Apple tablet per se. My prediction? That the launch of an Apple tablet will boost Tablet PC sales–regardless of whether the Apple tablet is a smashing success or not.

Let me explain where I’m coming from on this. A little background is in order:

You see, way back when my family ran a computer store that sold through the Internet and as part of their daily business they handled a wide variety of email. This gave me an idea: What about writing a program to help managed the email that would benefit both the customer and the business. Think of this as an email support system that was both visible on both sides of the firewall. It solved a bunch of different problems, but one in particular applies here.

As part of the email management system, I wrote routines to parse through the emails, counting words and phrases, clustering and classifying by topic, tone and so on and as an added one more extra bit of analysis graphed these measurements over time.

So let’s say a new processor was about to come out from AMD. More often than not, you’d see a spike of questions come in before the product launch that would peak at the launch itself and trail off as people bought the product or not or the product became scarce after an initial spike in sales.

Anyway, what fascinated me at the time, was that if you’d overlay let’s say Intel’s CPU sales for that period you would more often than not see a similar albeit smaller spike for its processors around the time of the AMD processor spike.

After a little thinking I realized what was going on. For highly anticipated products that generated a lot of interest, there’d often be an initial surge of sales for that product, but all of the pre-launch optimism and rumors didn’t match the reality that everyone expected or needed. For them, they’d either buy nothing or purchase an alternative product that better matched what they wanted. Whether the hype preceeding a product launch was stalling the market or the actual product couldn’t match the rumors, or it was too expensive, or whatever, the pattern was quite common.

So my best guess is that we’ll see something similar here with the much rumored Apple tablet. My prediction is that whenever the Apple tablet–or whatever it is–becomes officially available we’ll see a surge in Tablet PC sales. Since Windows 7 is going to be arriving on the shelves this fall and there’s also a lot of interest and respect for it, a fall or early 2010 launch for an Apple tablet might just be extremely well timed for Microsoft’s Tablet PCs.

True, this might mean that the back to school Tablet PC/Netbook sales might stall in anticipation of a possible Apple tablet–but I’m not so sure students would want to jeopardize their school work without a computer that they think they need for school. Similarly it might cause sales of the CrunchPad to stall a bit if it comes out before an Apple tablet. However, my guess is that initial Apple tablet sales will do well in the premium market and the more mature Tablet PC, Netbook, etc markets will get a slight bounce at this time too as people search out products that better match their expectations or price points.

I expect the non-Apple bounce to occur whether Apple actually releases a true Tablet or not and whether it sells well or not. In other words all the talk of tablets and their benefits are spreading the word about Tablet PCs themselves. There has been some negative commentary, but most of it is mixed with lots of caveats, so it looks like the time is ripe for some form of mobile touch/tablet device.

You can already see the possible forming of this sympathetic bounce now. If you read through the various posts and comment threads about all the things people are expecting to see in an Apple tablet, quite a few are anticipating some form of handwriting. So if Apple releases a tablet without handwriting or let’s say is too expensive, think about what might happen: There will more than likely be a significant number of people that decide to pass on the Apple tablet and pick up a Windows 7-based Tablet PC/Netbook or similar where they can get these features or better prices.

That’s my prediction anyway.