The holidays just got a little less cheery for PC companies. Tablet shipments will eclipse laptops for the first time in North America, driven by price and variety, according to research firm NPD DisplaySearch.

Popular $199 models, like Google's Nexus 7 tablet, and Amazon's Kindle Fire line, and a wider variety of sizes will propel fourth-quarter tablet shipments to 21.5 million units, "far exceeding" the 14.6 million laptops that are expected to ship in the same period, DisplaySearch's Richard Shim forecasted Nov. 21.

Beginning in 2013 in North America, Shim says he expects tablet shipments to exceed notebook shipments on an annual basis for the first time ever - 80 million tablets versus 63.8 million notebooks, he said.

"This Black Friday and the shopping season to follow will be the fuel to stoke the demand," wrote Shim in the report. "The $199 price point has increasingly become the target to match or beat with the introductions of Google's $199 Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire 7."

According to Shim, the composition of the tablet market has changed from the market-defining 9.7-inch iPad in 2010, to 7-inch, 7.9-inch, 8.9-inch, 10.1-inch, and 10.6-inch tablet sizes this year, spanning iOS, Android, and Windows 8 operating systems.

Apple's launch of its new 7.9-inch iPad mini, which starts at $329, earlier this month has seen huge demand for the new smaller iPad. Apple reported "record setting" sales figures of 3 million for the first weekend the company began selling the devices. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates that the bulk of first-weekend iPad sales -- 2 million to 2.5 million out of a total 3 million -- were for the smaller tablet.

"The new low price point is expected to appeal to a wider audience and drive up demand," Shim wrote in an October blog post.

The Nexus 7 tablet has been selling rapidly as well, about one million per month, according to tech manufacturer Asus.

Internationally, tablet shipments aren't expected to beat out notebooks until 2015, when 275.9 million tablets are projected to ship, as compared to 270 million notebooks.

iPad Mini

You can get an iPad Mini Wi-Fi model in three memory configurations: $329 for 16GB, $429 for 32GB, and $529 for 64GB. On Nov. 16, we'll see Wi-Fi + 4G models go on sale at $459 for 16GB, $559 for 32GB, and $659 for 64GB.

The 1,024x768-pixel resolution matches that of the iPad 2, but on a 7.9-inch display. "This definitely isn't Retina Display, but it's better-than-iPad-2 display. Videos look excellent, and the IPS screen has great wide-viewing angles," said CNET.

Includes a front-facing 720p-capable FaceTime camera, and a 5-megapixel back camera, and also supports 4G LTE, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi at 5.2Ghz, Bluetooth 4.0, and will use Apple's Lightning connector, first seen on the iPhone 5.

Apple claims that the Mini has a 10-hour battery life.

32GB Nexus 7

"Nexus 7 brings you the best of Google-YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Maps-and all the great content from Google Play in a slim, portable package that fits perfectly in your hand," said Google in its statement.

"To give you more room for all that great content you can now get Nexus 7 with 16GB ($199) or 32GB ($249) of storage. But we also wanted to make this highly portable tablet even more mobile. So we added HSPA+ mobile data. Nexus 7 is now also available with 32GB and HSPA+ mobile ($299), which can operate on more than 200 GSM providers worldwide, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S."

The Nexus 7 runs a new version of Android called Android 4.2. "Android 4.2 brings other great goodies like Gesture Typing, which lets you glide your finger over the letters you want to type on the keyboard-it makes typing fast, fun and a whole lot simpler. Android 4.2 also adds support for wireless display so you can wirelessly watch movies, YouTube videos and play games right on your Miracast-compatible HDTV."

Price

16GB for $199 and 32GB for $249; available in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan, and also through our retail partners Gamestop, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples and Walmart.