Nearly three weeks after its entry into the Russian market, retailers across the country revealed that they were out of Apple iPad 3G models, Kommersant.ru wrote today.

"PC market growth will be impacted by devices that enable better on-the-go content consumption such as media tablets and next-generation smartphones," said Gartner Research analyst Raphael Vasquez, Agence France-Presse reported. "These devices will be increasingly embraced as complements if not substitutes for PCs where voice and light data consumption are desired."

Image: iPhoneroot

Around 10,000-12,000 devices were meant to be officially available for sale from November 9 onwards, but verified figures were not available. According to Sostav.ru, more iPads with the 3G function were predicted to be delivered to the country's retailers before the end of the year, said Evgenii Butman, head of the ECS Group (Russia's Apple distributor).

An anonymous source familiar with the electronics industry said that the next wave of iPad devices to be imported into Russia will be larger in number because of the "initial success" of the sales, Kommersant informed. However, the exact number was not known, Lenta.ru stated.

Research firm Gartner estimated that in 2011, PC sales across the globe would amount to 409 million units, a 15.9 percent hike from the previous year, Business Week reported. The growth, however, was at first expected to be 18.1 percent.Gartner initially deduced that PC sales in 2010 would equate to a 17.9 percent boost, but the number has been dropped to 14.3 percent or 352 million units, according to Barron's.

Image: Tablets PC 2

In Russia, the iPad costs between RUB19,990 (€485) and RUB32,990 (€800). All the six variations of the model had infiltrated the Russian market, i.e. iPad Wi-Fi and iPad Wi-Fi + 3G, with the choice of 16Gb, 32Gb and 64Gb memory options. A number of shops still carry the iPad Wi-Fi model, Lenta.ru added.

Emerging markets were forecast to represent more than half of the overall global PC market by the end of next year but Gartner believed that there was a probability that in the near future these regions would skip PCs altogether and instead focus on other devices. In Europe and the United States, users avoided purchasing PCs because of financial issues, but Gartner mentioned that there was a chance that consumers might "temporarily, if not permanently" show more interest in tablets.

Gartner Research Director Ranjit Atwal explained that decreased consumer demand in PC devices could be a result of an augmenting interest towards tablets and that by 2014, tablets would affect about 10 percent of PC units, according to AFP. Last month, Gartner inferred that sales of tablet devices in general would grow from 20 million in 2010 to 55 million next year and would reach 208 million in 2014.

Citigroup analysis showed that next year 35 million tablet devices would be sold, according to Business Week. FBR Capital Markets expected 70 million tablets to be sold in 2011, 40 million of which would be Apple devices. FBR hinted that every 2.5 tablets purchased cancelled the sale of a single PC model.

"Media tablet capabilities are expected to become more PC-like in the coming years, luring consumers away from PCs and displacing a significant volume of PC shipments, especially mini-notebooks," Gartner said. "Media tablets are rapidly finding favor with PC buyers who are attracted to their more-dedicated entertainment-driven features and their instant-on capability."