Small business owners eager to jump on the tablet bandwagon

According to The NPD Group's third quarter SMB Technology Monitor, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of American small and medium-sized businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees plan to purchase tablets over the next 12 months.

Respondents indicated a strong preference for iPads over other offerings, and larger companies were found to have more of a desire to purchase the devices compared to their smaller counterparts.

Specifically, just over half (54 percent) of companies with a workforce of less than 50 expressed purchase intent, compared to 70 percent of those with 50 to 200 employees, 81 percent in the 201 to 500 workers category and 89 percent with 501 to 99 employees.

"Businesses of all sizes appear to be determined to capitalize on the tablet phenomenon," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD, in a statement.

Baker expanded upon the iPad's popularity in a recent interview with Mashable.

"There really isn't another product that has any kind of headway that the iPad has," he said. "It's probably not as much about the iPad as the product type. Employees are using them, and they want to find ways of using them in the business."

The news source notes that the popularity of tablets - specifically iPads - doesn't end with small businesses. In fact, according to a Model Metrics study released earlier this year, 83 percent of IT departments at large enterprises plan to deploy iPads by the end of 2013.

However, the allure of iPads may lessen as competitors such as Microsoft release their take on the technology. The company's Windows 8 operating system, which should begin shipping in fall 2012, was constructed to be tablet-friendly - a powerful incentive for companies that rely on Microsoft software.