Apple's iPad owned 95 percent of the tablet market in Q3, but one quarter later it's slipped to 75 percent, due to Samsung's Galaxy Tab and other Android tablets.
Apple's iPad
is still the world-dominating tablet by far, but during the fourth quarter,
competitors running Google's Android OS-led by the Samsung Galaxy Tab-took a
sizeable bite out of Apple's lead.
While Apple
fully owned the market during the third quarter of 2010, with 95 percent of the
worldwide market share, its share slipped to 75 percent during the third
quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics reported Jan. 31.
"Android
tablet volumes experienced 2,000 percent sequential growth and its global market
share soared to a record 22 percent in Q4 2010," Strategy Analytics Director
Neil Mawston said in a statement.
The main
driver behind Android's growth was Samsung, which, following heavy promotions
and the launch of the Galaxy Tab in dozens of countries, has sold more than 2
million units. During the first half of 2011, Strategy Analytics expects the
Android OS to continue accounting for larger portions of the market. "Tablet
makers like Android because of its perceived low cost and an accompanying range
of compelling media services such as YouTube and Google Maps," Mawston said.
The tablet
market as a whole grew 120 percent sequentially, with 9.7 million tablets
shipping during the quarter, up from 4.4 million the quarter before. Apple
shipped 7.3 million iPads, compared with the 2.1 million Android tablets that
shipped. "Other" operating systems accounted for 0.3 percent of the market,
making up about a half percent during the whole of 2010.
The United
States was "by far" the world's largest consumer of tablets during the quarter,
reported Strategy Analytics, making it a market that "no major vendor can
afford to ignore." The firm added that the growing tablet base will make
Android "a more attractive platform for media developers in the United States and
worldwide."
New models
from major vendors are scheduled to arrive in stores during the first half of
2011. Big things are expected of the Motorola Xoom, which will run the
tablet-optimized Android 3.0, known as "Honeycomb." Motorola has reportedly
placed orders for nearly 800,000 Xoom tablets, with orders expected to ramp
up to 1 million during the first quarter. Research In Motion, with its
enterprise-geared PlayBook, is expected to enjoy similar sales, as it's
reportedly producing 1 million units for this quarter-during which it will
release a WiFi-only version, before shipping a Sprint 4G-enabled version this
summer.
Earlier this
month, IDC forecast 44.6 million tablets to ship in 2011-with U.S. sales
accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total-and grow to 70.8 million units in
2012.
Encouraging
tablet sales, wrote IDC's Research Director Susan Kevorkian, will be "new
product and service introductions, channel expansion, price competition and
experimentation with new-use cases among consumers and enterprises."
Ticonderoga
Securities analyst Brian White expects that, any time now, Apple will share news
of an iPad 2, potentially persuading consumers to hold off on the purchase
of a Motorola Xoom or other Apple-competing device and "wait for the new iPad
that we believe will be launched in March/April."
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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