Android seven-inchers swipe rug from under Apple
iPad share slumps
The question is, does Apple’s tablet market share - or Android’s for that matter - actually matter? Apple is certainly selling more of the darn things, but after a brief year’s relief, sales of Android alternatives are rising even more quickly.
According to ABI Research, a market watcher, Apple’s share of the world tablet market fell in Q3 2012 to 55 per cent, the lowest share Apple has ever had since launching the iPad in 2010.
Apple has been market leader since that time, but as rivals have followed it to market, its share has inevitably fallen. By Christmas 2010, it seemed that tablets from Samsung, Toshiba, Asus, Acer and others would push Android past iOS during 2011. However, the launch of the iPad 2 and slow roll-outs of Google’s tablet-specific version of Android, Honeycomb, saw Apple extend its lead during the year and into 2012, a trend given extra momentum by Spring’s debut of the iPad 3 and its “retina” screen.
Now, though, competitors’ focus on the 7in segment of the market has started to pay off, most notably with growing sales of the Amazon Kindle Fire and the launch of Google’s Asus-made Nexus 7.
That has prompted Apple to get out a small tablet of it’s own, ABI suggested. “With the introduction of a smaller, lower-cost iPad Mini, Apple has acknowledged Android’s beachhead of 7in-class tablets,” said ABI senior practice director Jeff Orr.
Yet Apple doesn’t appear to have rushed the Mini to market. If the rumour-mill is anything to go by, Apple was working on the Mini during 2011, if only to have a design in the labs ready to release should the need arise.
Will the Mini slow Android’s growth? Probably not, says Orr, who reckons the Mini will broaden Apple’s appeal, but not win over punters who will be impressed not only by rival tablets’ specs, but more particularly their low prices.
The Nexus 7, the Kindle Fire HD, the Barnes & Noble Nook HD and others cost a lot less than the Mini. Time was when a lower price meant lower quality, but these tablets’ makers have upped their game in the past year, releasing products styled to match Apple’s.
These devices have grabbed the headlines, but Samsung still sells more than all of the them but Apple, its Tab 2 series and Galaxy Note family winning over plenty of punters. How well it will hold up against the barrage of marketing from Apple, Google and Amazon at the moment remains to be seen, but its brand is strong and it does well promoting its products through leftfield channels such as pop-up stores in shopping centres. It'll be aided by Google, which will undoubtedly want to push its co-sponsored Nexus 10.
Roll on Christmas. ®
COMMENTS
Re: More fake numbers by Google....
"All these claims are fake"
You really think so? Really? You either have a real scoop to offer the world (assuming you have some evidence), or a very strange imagination.
"BUT the iPad4 is the only true tablet on the market that is worth buying".
Damn. You mean the Nexus 10 I have and love is rubbish? Thanks for telling me. I didn't realise.
Losing 45% of the market share in 2 years.
Seems alot worse when you put it like that.
Re: More fake numbers by Google....
LOL, you really should go for a full time comedy career.
Unless you actually believe any of what you just wrote...
Not surprised
I know that anecdotes don't count for shit, but tons of people i know have been asking questions about, Nexus 7's and Kindle Fires recently.
And usually when they find out that they do indeed have a Facebook and Twitter app, they get one.
Re: More fake numbers by Google....
Oh dear, you poor soul, don't you know that most android tablets are enabled to access the google play store the same way as the android phones are, Its dead easy from that to work out for google, go to your play store account and it even tells you what brand and model of tablet you have.
As to usage it would be useful to also know what phone people have and what the usage on that is. total mobile usage per person rather than device is more useful to know.
ipad 4 only one worth buying ? God are you biased and deluded, there are many other choices right down to the blackberry playbook at current price, its all down to what you are going to use it for, and for the vast majority of people who buy an ipad an android would do just as well unless they already have loads of apps and content on itunes.
In fact the only reasons to buy apple over android are the following 3, first the UI is the one you prefer, second you have loads of itunes content already and don't know how to access it from other devices and thirdly you just prefer the feel of the tablet in your hand. Several people I work with have ebayed their ipads and gone android recently and are more than happy.
