Tablets won’t displace PCs anytime soon according to a new forecast made by Gartner analyst George Shiffler. He says that despite media shouts about soon “death” of PC market, tablets are only expected to displace around 10% of PCs by 2014. The reason, he says, is that tablets aren't likely to develop the extensive content creation capabilities that users find in PCs.

"The tablet is a consumption device primarily," he explains. "We think that as they evolve they'll acquire more content creation capabilities but they're certainly not there yet."

This week Gartner made its latest forecast projecting that PC sales would grow by 14.3% in 2010, down from the 17.9% growth that the firm projected in September. Besides, Gartner cut its projections of 2011 PC shipments to 409 million units, or roughly 16% more units than will be shipped by the end of 2010. Previously, Gartner had projected that total worldwide PC shipments would increase by more than 18% in 2011.

Talking about what factors could further boost the tablets market Shiffler says that they'll have to develop stronger operating systems that are capable of handling more content-creation applications. But even then he says tablets by their nature face limits, since people aren't likely to use a touchscreen to type up large documents or reports. In the long run he sees tablets as an interesting "hybrid" species that will have its own niche market but won't end up cannibalizing either smartphones or PCs.