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Android is catching up to IOS in the booming tablet market
BEANCOUNTERS at Strategy Analytics (SA) have revealed that tablets running Google's Android have gained ground on Apple's Ipads.
Tablets running Android gained 10.1 per cent market share last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2010 reaching 39.1 per cent. Meanwhile Ipad market share has dropped 10.6 per cent down to 57.6 per cent. The figures are based on tablet market shares for the fourth quarter of 2011.
Neil Mawston, executive director at SA said, "Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes. Android is so far proving relatively popular with tablet manufacturers despite nagging concerns about fragmentation of Android's operating system, user-interface and app store ecosystem."
Going by the figures, Android tablets are catching up to Apple's Ipads. Google announced its latest version, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich during the quarter but tablets running this up to date version are still few and far between.
However, the cappuccino company hopes to put a stop to Android tablet momentum with the next generation Ipad 3, which it is likely to announce in March.
Overall shipments of tablets have been on the upswing, with Apple hitting 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 and Android tablets selling 10.5 million units. These figures are more than double for IOS and more than triple for Android compared with the previous year.
SA said that a total of 66.9 million tablets were shipped last year, more than three and a half times the number in 2010. PC shipments fell by 6.5 per cent in the same quarter.
Microsoft did feature in the statistics in a small way, gaining 1.5 per cent of tablet market share, but this could change when Windows 8 tablets start to arrive. SA said, "The upcoming release of Windows 8 this year cannot come quickly enough for Microsoft, so its hardware partners can start competing more effectively in the tablet space." µ
Tags: Hardware
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"Shipments refer to sell-in. Numbers are rounded. The definition of tablet does not include e-book readers."
So, in theory, the Kindle Fire is not included.
But, "sell in" and "bought by consumers" are not the same thing.
Question: If you (HTC, for example) were going to introduce a tablet and sell it worldwide--what is the mininum number you would have to make just to adequately stock the channel?
Shipment does not equal sales all you have to do is go into any store and see how many Android tablets they have gathering dust to realize sales are no where close. Only the Fire has had any real success.