Notebook players, seeing that first-tier brand vendors such as RIM, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard (HP) are all backing away from the tablet PC bandwagon, are turning pessimistic about non-Apple tablet PCs and believe even Google's upcoming Android operating system codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich will not help non-Apple players make a comeback.

The sources pointed out that non-Apple players may need to wait until the Android version after Ice Cream Sandwich or Windows 8 hit the market to fight back against Apple.

However, some notebook vendors still expect demand for tablet PCs to drop significantly, like it did for netbooks, helping the traditional notebook industry to return on track.