Compal president says tablet market is not easy easy as vendors expect

Compal Electronics president Ray Chen at a company investors conference on September 1, commented that he expects shipments of non-Apple tablet PCs to not exceed 15 million units in 2011 and players will quickly quit after finding out the market is not as easy as they expect.

Chen expects the shipments of non-Apple tablet PCs to be around 10-12 million, and said that even if the company is capable of manufacturing one-fifth of the total shipments, the products are unlikely to contribute significantly to revenues.

Chen also noted that Wintel netbook sales have recently been devoured seriously by tablet PCs and if the two firms do not consider dropping prices or improve performance, sales will continue to drop.