The sales of tablets are booming. Apple established a trend where more and more users prefer tablets for Internet browsing, checking e-mails, watching videos and image galleries, chatting with friends on the go, playing games and reading books. Tablets are portable, with lightweight design and small dimensions. Tablets suit business professionals, students, technology geeks, housewives - they are universal.

Many industry analysts call 2011 the year of tablets. In the second quarter the tablets sales exceeded laptop sales the first time in history. We saw some new entrants in the market like Motorola Xoom, ASUS Eee Pad Slider, Acer Iconia Tab A500, Dell Streak 7 but they were not very successfully due to fairly high price and inability to differentiate. Though these Android-based devices failed Samsung made an adequate answer to iPad with the release of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is beyond doubt the most advanced Android tablet on the market. Samsung managed to create a device with sexy and attractive design but its resemblance to iPad caused a series of lawsuits from Apple.

This year Motorola has sold its phone division Motorola Mobility to Google. Such acquisition will surely help Google strengthen competitive advantages of the Android and in the upcoming year we can expect new Android tablets with more seamless integration of hardware and software. And of course the release of Amazon Kindle Fire cannot go unnoticed. Amazon offered a perfectly balanced tablet aimed at content consumers, which is sold at a fraction of iPad price. Though the tablet has very limited functional capability it serves its purpose very well and all agree that Kindle Fire was a smart move for Amazon to enter the tablet market.

Of course iPad has retained its leading position and no doubt this is one of the most successful products ever made by Apple. Within less than two years Apple sold millions of tablets, creating a new class of product. Release of iPad 2, successor of the Apple's first tablet, was also a huge hit and exceeded all expectations. According to Apple's financial report of the third quarter it appears that the company sales of iPads increased by 166% in comparison with its last year. iPad 2 is simply a superb tablet that is almost impossible to beat.

The passing year has been very fruitful for tablets but 2012 is going to be even more promising. We will see the release of iPad 3, new tablets from Samsung and Motorola, which is now acquired by Google. We can expect new features in the tablets and even greater sales.

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