Strategy Analytics forecasts more than 780 million tablets in use worldwide in 2016

Market researcher Strategy Analytics has released a new study, "Global Tablet Installed Base Forecast by Country," which projects that the worldwide installed base of tablets will exceed 780 million units in 2016. According to analyst Matthew McKee, growth will be driven by ongoing price erosion and replacement of obsolete and broken tablets. He believes that the Asia Pacific region, led by China, India and Japan, will represent 25% of the entire global tablet installed base by the end of 2016, and will become the number one region, just ahead of North America. Here are a few other findings from the report:

• The global tablet installed base will increase by 125% this year. 
• By 2016, the top 14 countries will have over 50% household penetration of tablets. 
• Small, wealthy countries such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore will have the highest household tablet penetration.

HP dropping Windows 7 tablet: Bad news for Microsoft and Intel?

Yesterday, word unofficially came out that HP is killing the Windows 7-based tablet that it's been demonstrating for months, on the grounds that Windows 7 isn't an appropriate platform for building tablet applications and requires too much power. Another rumor started circulating that HP is planning to shift to non-Intel CPU designs for tablets (most likely ARM- or Snapdragon-based designs) because Intel's Atom processors use too much power.

If HP couldn't get Windows 7 to work as a tablet platform, it's unlikely that other vendors are going to have much more success. Microsoft compounded its problem by announcing that its Courier project, a two-screen, book-like tablet with a custom operating system and applications, has been killed. It now looks like Microsoft will only be a bit player in the tablet business, at least for a while.

Intel will similarly be hurt by HP's decision to shift to non-Intel processors for tablets. Both Intel and Microsoft are looking for new areas of profitable growth, and tablets are the hottest new platform. If Intel doesn't have a practical solution for tablets, it will miss a big growth opportunity, at the same time that sales of netbooks (the primary customers for Atom CPUs) are slowing.