According to new statistics that have recently been shared by the IDC analysts, the number of tablets which will be shipped in 2011 will increase by 17 percent year-on-year --- from 53.5 million units in 2010 to 62.5 million units this time round.

The IDC analysis - which covers the April-June period, but has been released recently – indicates that 13.6 million media tablets were shipped, though not necessarily sold, during April to June this year. Nearly 68.3 percent share of these shipments was grabbed by the market-leading Apple iPad.

IDC’s upbeat forecast for tablets is a striking contrast to its murky down-rating of personal computer (PC) shipments. After having repeatedly cut their PC growth projections this year, the IDC analysts now expect that 357 million PCs in all will be shipped this year.

In case the IDC forecasts turn out right, it would imply that the media tablet market was, in unit terms, nearly 17.5 percent - or a little less than one-fifth - as big as the PC market. As such, the figures would indicate the tablet market’s explosive growth vis-à-vis the 2010 figures, when the 18million tablet shipments were barely 5 percent in unit terms in comparison to the 347 million PC shipments.

Meanwhile, noting that the share of the Android tablets will witness a drop in the third quarter, IDC analyst opine that the share of the Apple iOS share will continue to be over 40 percentage points more than Google Android’s share “for the remainder of the year.”