Gartner: No Return For Tablet Sales Boom In 2015

Halcyon days for tablet sales won't return any time soon, according to a report Monday from Gartner Inc., which forecast unit sales growth of 8 percent in the current year.

"The collapse of the tablet market in 2014 was alarming," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, which predicts 233 million tablets in 2015.

"In the last two years, global sales of tablets were growing in double-digits," Atwal said.

Increasingly, tablet lifetimes are getting extended and software upgrades, especially for Apple Inc. AAPL devices, keep the tablets current.

Another factor in slowing sales growth according to Gartner is a lack of innovation in hardware.

Gartner expects desk-based and notebook personal computer sales to drop 7.2 percent in the current year to 259 million units, while smartphone sales will increase 3.9 percent to 1.9 billion units.

Apple sales will grow 6.4 percent to 279.4 million units, including iPhones, iPads and PCs.

Sales of Microsoft Corporation's MSFT Windows-based devices of all kinds will increase 6.6 percent to 355 million units in 2015, while sales of devices based on Google Inc's GOOGL Android will grow nearly 26 percent to 1.46 billion units.