“Citigroup’s Walter Pritchard, Richard Gardner, Mark Mahaney, and Glen Yeung late last night offered up an update to Citi’s thinking about tablet computers, based on a survey of 1,800 consumers in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and China conducted through online surveys in July and August,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s. “Broad conclusions are that the tablet computer could be a personal computer replacement in China, though maybe not in developed markets, and that the dominance of Apple’s iPad has increased since Citi conducted a similar survey in November of last year.”

“Tablet computer ownership has jumped from 3% to 18% of survey respondents since the year-earlier study, they write,” Ray reports. “Interestingly, so has PC ownership: laptops are now owned by 81%, up from 62%. Smartphone use has gone from 28% to 59%. The number of people intending to buy a tablet has risen from 14% to 31%… Those considering a tablet now express a preference for Apple 77% of the time versus 73% back in November. Interest in Microsoft’s Windows on a tablet has slipped from 52% to 40%, while enthusiasm for Google’s (GOOG) “Android” software on a tablet is ‘stable’ at 36% versus 38% a year earlier.”

Ray reports, “Out of 75 million tablet units that may be shipped in 2012, ‘We currently forecast 50 million iPads for, but Apple appears on track to sell >45M units in CY11, suggesting our estimate is likely conservative,’ they write. ‘Every 1M iPads is worth $0.04-0.05 of incremental EPS (depending on mix).’”

Read more in the full article here.