What Apple has been harping about, and with late affirmation coming from both Microsoft and Google, got another boost this week as research firm NPD DisplaySearch declared that mobile computing will be core of the tech world and tablet computers will fuel its growth.

NPD's new study largely echoed the pronouncement made by Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year that the preferred mobile computing of the future would be the iPad and, to his consternation, the similar gadgets that will be powered by Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows 8.

By 2017, the NPD survey said tablet shipments worldwide will reach 416 million units, just enough for the 'magic slate' to become the king of mobile computing devices in every conceivable markets.

Tablets will be so prevalent over the next five years but the dominance will not totally obliterate the trusty notebook computers, which in fact will also see significant rise in shipment numbers within the same period.

The conventional mobile PCs should ship out 393 million units by 2017, still accumulating enough numbers for the gizmos not fade out from consumers' consciousness but definitely losing more rooms from the steady encroach of tablets.

All PC units that will hit the global markets in the next half-decade will amount to 809 million units, promising a rich prospect for manufacturers to fiercely compete in the segment, which lately has been witnessing the entry of more attractive, more powerful and cheaper models that could soon give current market leader iPad real competition.

Microsoft had earlier unveiled its Surface brand, which will be released in ARM and Intel models and Google followed suit shortly with the quad-core Nexus Tablet that AsusTek will manufacture.

All the hustle and bustle to attract consumers' attention further raise the bar of tablet competition, NPD said, and the world can only expect upcoming and future products that offer longer battery life, better portability and quicker boot time - features that were generally absent in early laptop models.

And iPad's breakthrough Retina Display is only the beginning, analysts said, as the next generation of tablets should bring with them crisper image rendering and more interesting apps, which beneath will be powered by multi-core processors and more stable operating systems, according to NPD.

As better technology is achieved, NPD projected on its report that "the lines between tablet and notebook PCs are blurring."

These innovations, the report said, would be more appreciated in the mature markets, which NPD said mostly comprised of North America, Japan (and a number of neighbouring countries in the Asia Pacific region) and West Europe.

In these particular markets, "consumer preference for mobile computing devices is shifting from notebook to tablet PCs," the NPD report said.

"We expect mature markets to be the primary regions for tablet PC adoption ... as services and infrastructure needed to create compelling new usage models are often better established in mature markets," NPD analyst Richard Shim was reported as saying by Agence France Presse (AFP).

And by 2017, despite efforts by traditional PC vendors to shrink the girth and heft of laptop unit while keeping them powerful and sexy, heavy demands for tablets would lead to the product being reduced to only 49 percent of overall PC market share.

Notebooks presently dominate the inside competition with a 60 percent lead, according to CNET.

In the mature markets alone, tablet shipments could total to more than 250 million units in five years time, giving the device at least 60 percent of slice in the global PC market, the NPD report showed.