Apple iPad has 90% share of tablet market
If you ever find yourself wondering how much of the tablet computer marketplace has been locked up by the Apple iPad, you can stop thinking about it. The iPad still had a 90 percent share during the last quarter.
With more than a half a year of experience under their belt, Apple is still selling 90 percent of the tablet computers that see the light of day. Put another way, with 8 months to successfully copy the iPad and give it some competition, no one was able to challenge the iPad. Certainly, none of the companies that could have done so innovated an interesting competitor to the iPad managed it, settling instead for building clone after clone of the popular Apple tablet. And there were a lot of tablets sold, according to new IDC Research numbers and a ZDNet story, with 4.8 million sold in the quarter just ended, up from 3.3 million in the previous quarter.
IDC also sees a year of growth ahead in the tablet marketplace overall. The company figures that 17 million total tablets shipped in 2010. They see that marketplace growing to about 45 million in 2011. Apple’s lead is not supposed to stay as large as it was last year as many companies will be introducing and selling tablets powered by the Android operating system from Google. If they follow the process set by smartphones, there will soon be dozens or even a hundred different Android tablet models from nearly that many manufacturers. Also like the smartphone race, none of the individual Android clone tablets will come anywhere nears the iPad’s numbers, but their sales will add up.
That is exactly what is happening in the smartphone market now. Android smartphone numbers are up, but it has taken over 100 of them to begin to close the gap with the iPhone. Any one of these Android phones, taken individually, is no threat to the original. But when the fight is 100 to 1, the 100-plus are bound to catch up. It looks like more of the same for the tablet market.
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