MS bashes BlackBerry in tablet fight

PlayBook less popular than Windows tabs

By Tony Smith, 21st July 2011

Microsoft saw more tablets ship with one of its operating systems during Q2 than RIM shipped BlackBerry PlayBooks.

So reveals market watcher Strategy Analytics (SA), which pegged RIM's share of the tablet market at 3.3 per cent, MS' at 4.6 per cent.

No surprises for guessing the top two.

Apple took 61.3 per cent of the tablet biz during the April, May and June, a healthy lead over Google, which came away with a 30.1 per cent share.

Google, of course, is one thing - actual tablets vendors are another. SA didn't break down Android's share of the market into the contributions made by Motorola, Samsung, Asus and co., but whichever way you slice it, not one of them is shipping as many tablets as Apple has managed to do.

Android fanboys can at least take pleasure from Apple's declining marketshare - down from 94.3 per cent in Q2 2010 - but since Apple had so little competition a year ago, such a shift was always on the cards. And its share loss has been more than compensated by the year-on-year leap in unit shipments: 3.3m to 9.3m.

MS deriders hoping Redmond's lead over RIM comes from old-style Tablet PCs will be disappointed: SA isn't counting those, as shown by Microsoft's zero per cent share in Q2 2010.

Overall, tablet sales were up 331 per cent year, from 3.5m units to 15.1m. Watch out, netbooks, they're coming to get ya. ®

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Highly Rated

Posted Thursday 21st July 2011 10:02 GMT

Anonymous Coward

Advertising

I've seen adverts on the telly for the PlayBook, their USP seems to be that it runs Flash.

Which is a bit like saying 'you should totally date me because I have herpes'

Posted Thursday 21st July 2011 12:11 GMT

Prof Yaffle

Seconded

I had an iPad (sold quickly - hated the thing, far too limited in CODECs, for example), I have an Android tablet and I have a PlayBook. And yes, I even paid for at least one of those.

The PlayBook is a great bit of kit - nice size, swift, great UI (I really like the from-bezel swiping and the lack of a home screen). But the application selection is truly, truly dire - I don't know about waiting for the "run Android apps" engine, but I'd be better off getting out my old Palm III for application support. And the lack of native email is just rubbish... "take two smart devices into the shower? Er, yes, because they're symbiotically joined at the hip". Even then, when you're bridged to a Blackberry, you don't have full functionality - try creating a new appointment and mark it "private", for example.

To me, they've got one shot at a firmware upgrade to make the difference (perhaps linked to the upcoming cellular version), and after that... well, as a device to kick around the kitchen and quickly browse the web, it's great; as a toy to hand the kids to play flash-based games, it works marvellously. But not at that price, though, I'm afraid.

Posted Thursday 21st July 2011 12:00 GMT

Kristian Walsh

"Faroe Islands beats San Marino"

So, the second-worst player in the tablet market outsold the worst.

When you stop (misleadingly) treating "Android" as if it was a manufacturer, one thing becomes clear: There isn't a tablet market; there's an iPad market. People buying iPads are not cross-shopping, they're only interested in the Apple offering. At launch of the iPad 2, 65% of buyers already owned an iPhone (30% had owned an iPad 1). That's an incredible crossover, especially considering the huge numbers involved.

Everyone else is selling "a tablet"; Apple are selling "a bigger screen for your favourite apps". The Android tablet marketing is courting the nerds, with spec sheets and CPU speeds, but this isn't a computer, it's a supposed to be a broad market consumer electronics device, and specsheets do not matter here. (Samsung may be a CE company, but the tablets come out of their phones division, not their home entertainment one).

So where are Sony, Philips, Sharp, Panasonic? Tablets are more like TVs than any computer is (and are used in the same setting as TVs), and these companies have the product design talent and economies of scale, brand reputation and distribution to really push the devices into the market.

* with apologies to the Faroe Islanders' football team, who are actually doing quite well these days.