In a Tech Crunch interview, HP executive, Todd Bradley, estimates that tablets will be a $40 B market that is now in its infancy, within the next few years. Ironically, most major electronics manufactures missed the 2011 holiday season of tablet deployment expect Apple’s IPad that just entered into Walmart distribution hubs for national deployment.

Apple announced that it was ramping up its iPad production with aspirations to produce over 2M iPads per month. This could be seen as a defensive posture for Apple in an attempt to saturate the market in anticipation of Google’s android approach, but in the absence of any competition, I believe there will be the demand. The social rumor mill is a buzz about the Walmart – Apple partnership to include Walmart's “strong recommending” to their electronic's vendors NOT produce tablet computing platforms that would compete against the iPad, thus greatly decreasing the potential for other thin clients in entering the market prior to the holiday rush according to one consumer electronics importer wishing not to be identified.

What is gold for tablet manufactures is poison for any manufacture in the PC space as thin clients may soon replace the laptop, or even desktop. But given processing speed, battery life, applications, and even limitations in conductivity I wouldn’t throw away your desktops until next year.

My predictions for this Christmas season expect to see a lot of independents push into the marketplace. Distribution channels are key for a competitive lockdown in the market place. Those that have product, marketing, and distribution in place prior to the November 15^th holiday rush stand to do very well this holiday season.