Tablets For All! (And Especially Apple)

It’s entirely reasonable to think we’re headed into a tablet bubble, with way too many people making way too many tablets, and not nearly enough people buying the things.

Or you could argue that we’re just seeing the opening act of the tablet market, and that it’s going to be really, really big. Especially for Apple.

That’s the thesis that Credit Suisse is pushing, in an Apple research report titled “The Most Valuable Company in the World?”, where it slaps a price target of $500 on Apple shares.

The report argues that the tablet market will hit $120 billion by 2015, and that Steve Jobs and company could own half of it. Near-term, they figure iPads will be a $34 billion business for Apple next year.

Their summary, via Fortune:

iPad—addressing a $120bn market LT. Our proprietary analysis for tablets (takes into account factors such as regression analysis for long-term computing demand, pricing by tier, and cannibalization of multiple industries) highlights that the tablet market could rise to $120bn by 2015. Within this segment, we believe Apple will dominate, given aggressive pricing, time to market advantage and a software edge, maintaining share as high as 50% long term. This means that iPad should become a $34bn business by FY12. Further, our proprietary BOM analysis implies that GMs for this business will expand to 35% by end-FY11 from around the 27% levels seen in FY10.