FORTUNE -- Like GigaOm's Ryan Kim, NPD uses the term "tablet" as a place holder for Apple's (AAPL) iPad in a forecast Tuesday that suggests 2016 as the year tablet shipments will overtake notebook PCs in the U.S.
In Kim's report on how tablets now outpace smartphones in terms of the traffic they deliver to online shopping sites, he waits until the last sentence of the second paragraph to note that "Almost all of the traffic (95 percent) was from the iPad."
NPD doesn't offer a percentage, but at least the iPad makes it into the first sentence of the press release:
"Tablet PCs, such as Apple's iPad, are expected to be the growth driver for the mobile PC market over the next few years."
Thanks to John Gruber for spotting Kim's euphemism.
Especially if you throw in iPad sales, as yet another Wall Street analyst has done
If you look closely at the chart at right, taken from a note to clients issued Monday by Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore, you'll see that it has two entries for the second quarter of 2011.
Both show notebook computer sales as reported by the six largest vendors. The difference -- which Whitmore has highlighted with an orange MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 8, 2011 7:09 AM ET
Expects average sales of Apple's "quasi-tablet for productivity users" to hit 700,000/quarter
In early April, J.P. Morgan's Mark Moskowitz issued a glowing report on Apple's thinnest notebook computer in which he predicted that Apple would sell $2.2 billion worth of MacBook Airs in the next 12-18 months.
On Thursday he revised his estimates -- upward. Not only did the new models released last October sell like crazy in the Christmas quarter, but MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 16, 2011 10:07 AM ET
The research firm blames devices like Apple's for a 34% drop in its 2010 growth estimates
"We expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales, especially in mature markets."
That's George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, Inc., giving his clients the bad news that the 15.9% growth his company had projected for notebook computer sales MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 4, 2011 11:30 AM ET
Thursday night, just as a tornado -- or something like it -- was knocking down the trees that grow in our Brooklyn neighborhood, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty issued a report to clients with a chart (copied above) graphing the damage done to the notebook PC market over the past eight or nine months. "Tablet cannibalization" -- chiefly by Apple's (AAPL) iPad -- is at least partially responsible, she suggests. Her MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 17, 2010 6:47 AM ET
After decades of being viewed as an inexpensive, also-ran chip manufacturer, AMD is in a better position to compete. Much of that has to do with CEO Dirk Meyer.
Dirk Meyer has been good for AMD.
While it's far too early to say whether the chip company will budge Intel's stranglehold over the x86-based processor market, Meyer, who started with the company as an engineer in 1995 to work on the MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer - Aug 30, 2010 12:08 PM ET
CNNMoney contributor Jonathan Blum reports on the latest offerings in e-readers as part of our team coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show.
Ben Baer, Senior Producer - Jan 7, 2010 10:16 PM ET
Who'll win over consumers this holiday season? We test-drive the newest netbooks and notebooks.
This Christmas expect small computer overload -- so many options, so little time (and money). All the major computer manufacturers are coming out with lightweight 'net-connected laptops, and they're banking on big sales: The researchers at IDC expect some 160 million notebook computers to sell worldwide by the end of the year.
But which company will come out MORE
Kim Thai, contributor - Sep 22, 2009 6:00 AM ET