In a new report (http://macte.ch/Wa5Rd) for clients, the Forrester research group has revised its US consumer tablet forecast upward.

"We now expect 112.5 million US adults to own a tablet in 2016, which will equal 34.3% of US adults," analyst Sarah Roman Epps writes. "In Europe, the numbers are similarly impressive, with an expected 105.7 million tablet users, or 30.4% of consumers 16 and older, in the EU-7 by 2016. With an assumed replacement rate of two years, cumulative unit sales will be much higher: In the US, we forecast that consumers will buy 292.5 million tablets from 2010 to 2016."

Forrester estimates that US consumers constitute only 43% of Apple’s 55 million iPads sold through the end of its last fiscal quarter, with the rest going to consumers and enterprises in the rest of the 90 countries where the iPad is now sold. The research also notes that "whether it will or not, we think Apple should launch a smaller, cheaper iPad to ward off competition from Amazon."