Tablets will replace traditional computers slowly, but surely, Tim Cook believes

Feb 15, 2012 20:41 GMT  ·  By

Asked at the Goldman Sachs tech conference whether he expected the tablet industry to become larger than the PC industry, Apple CEO Tim Cook confidently stated that “the tablet market can replace the unit sales of the PC market.”

Speaking to Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope, who was conducting the interview at the firm’s Technology Conference yesterday, Cook said of the iPad “We started using it at Apple well before it was launched.”

“We had our shades pulled so no one could see us, but it quickly became that 80-90% of my consumption and work was done on the iPad,” he revealed. “From the first day it shipped, we thought that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market and it was just a matter of the time it took for that to occur.”

Cook not only upholds his beliefs today, he feels stronger now than he did then, he told Shope.

“As I look out and I see all of these incredible usages for it, I see the incredible rate and pace of innovation, and the developers -- If we had a meeting at this hotel, and we invited everyone doing cool stuff on PC, we wouldn't have anyone here,” he said.

On the iOS front, on the other hand… “If you invited everyone working on iOS or on that other operating system, you wouldn't be able to fit everyone!” Cook proudly remarked.

He stressed: “That's where the innovation is!”

Ensuring that investors didn’t jump to any conclusions at the sound of these assertions, Cook added that he didn’t believe PC is going to die.

“I love the Mac and it's still growing and I believe it can still grow,” he explained. “But I believe that tablet market can replace the unit sales of the PC market, and it's just a matter of the speed at which that happens. It's too much of a profound change in things for that to not happen. That's just my opinion,” Cook said.