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You can read that as bitter hype; then again, we're looking at a company that's known to live up to its words. In a recent interview with UDN, Acer Inc. Chairman JT Wang echoed ASUS' recent forecast regarding the iPad's erosion of the netbook market in the US and UK, although he also pointed out that netbooks are still selling like hot... cakes in developing countries. As for the tablet market itself, Wang believes that Apple's closed camp operation will ultimately bow to other joint forces once the market matures, thus lowering the iPad's current near-100 percent share to somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. Hell, the man even suggested this could be an over-estimation, and referred to the Mac's minuscule 5 percent global share over the last few years. And you know what? He might be right. That doesn't mean that the iPad's days are numbered though since Apple's never been interested in taking part in the "race to the bottom." Apple measures success by profits, not market share -- even a small percentage of high-margin laptop and smartphone sales has proven to be a very good thing for Apple's bottom line. Besides, if open is such a great thing, we'd like to question Wang on what caused the Windows-based tablets to flop in the first place? Regardless, this would certainly be another prediction to look out for in a few years' time.

Acer's JT Wang: iPad's market share will drop to about 20 percent, maybe less originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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