It is starting to look like the Tablet thing will be an Apple only affair, according to analysts Gartner.

Big G said that mounting competition will see Apple's share of the touchscreen tablet market decline but the iPad will still make up nearly half of all tablets sold in 2015. The iPad will account for 47 percent of worldwide sales of 294.3 million tablets in 2015, down from 63.5 percent of 108.2 million units to be sold in 2012 and 68.7 percent of 69.7 million tablets to be sold this year. This year Apple has 83.9 percent of the total 17.6 million tablets sold in 2010.

Google's Android operating system will see its market share rise steadily from 14.2 percent last year, to 19.9 percent this year, to 24.4 percent in 2012 and 38.6 percent in 2015. You can forget all about RIM, which will have opnly 10 per cent by 2015 but Gartner was optimistic about HP's WebOS operating system acquired from Palm. WebOS tablets will have 4.0 percent of the market by the end of 2011, 3.9 percent by 2012 and 3.0 percent by 2015.

Gartner seemed to have forgotten all about Microsoft. The risk is that the tablet thing is entirely an Apple fad, in which case it will disappear if punters get bored. Rather than be a game changer that could mean that the iPad becomes a technology dead end.