Apple’s Tablet Dominance Unquestioned, But Android Starts To Make Move
Unless you’ve been asleep for the past year, you already know that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is dominating the tablet market. But new research from Strategy Analytics suggests that Android vendors are starting to get their act together, at least in terms of putting product out in stores where people can see what Android has to offer.
As expected following a quarter in which it sold 9.3 million iPads–more than any other tablet vendor combined by a large margin–Apple leads the tablet market with 61 percent of the market, according to Strategy Analytics’ estimates. However that’s actually down from the same period last year when there was virtually no tablet market outside of the iPad and Apple enjoyed 94 percent market share.
With the maturation of Google’s Honeycomb software for Android tablets and the efforts of companies like Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and Samsung to improve on past mistakes, Android vendors shipped 4.6 million tablets during the second quarter. It doesn’t seem that all that many Android tablets are being used, however: Google’s own Android usage stats from the last month suggest that fewer people are actively using Android tablets than people who are using a two-year-old version of the software.
Strategy Analytics thinks that will start to change over the second half of the year, especially if Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has come up with something compelling for its widely expected debut into the Android tablet market. However, AllThingsD picked up on research from Good Technology that suggests at least when it comes to the enterprise, Android tablets are practically nonexistent.
One other interesting note: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) actually outshipped Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) during the quarter in the tablet market despite not having a tablet OS of its own. A few traditional Microsoft partners from the PC industry shipped tablets with Windows 7, and apparently cranked out enough volume at 700,000 units to top the 500,000 units that RIM executives reported having shipped during its last quarter. Like Android, however, it’s not at all clear that people are actually buying and using such tablets.
‘Use’ dictates purchases and sales. After years of supply and demand, people and organizations have matured to a degree with sufficient quality to make well informed purchases based on planned usages of the offerings based on their actual use. Satisfaction is no longer an issue, there are sufficient offerings to compare and choose, but Apple has become the most pervasive choice, with Android a distant second. I think Apple offers the best use cases, balance, value, and longevity. Android offers hardware that wows, like the HTC EVO 3D. A 3D camera actually costs more to purchase than the $199 HTC EVO 3D. I think Apple is moving into the enterprise and casual lesisure market whereas Android is capturing the young market. Between Apple and Android there are very few other choices. Incumbents like Research In Motion are simply going away.
That’s pretty impressive growth for android in tablets. When the blogger says that it doesn’t seem that all that many are being used, he quotes the percentage of Android 3 devices (tablets) relative to all android devices (lots and lots of phones plus some other things). By that logic iPads aren’t used much either. To me, that sounds like a good way to get perspective on just how large the smartphone market is. From what I have read, a fair number of smartphones run on Android.