In September 2010, Apple had a market share of 95% on the tablet PC market, while Android tablets captured only 2.3% of the global market. From September until now, the Samsung Galaxy Tab appeared and in the near future other Android tablets will enter the market. In just 3 months Apple lost 18% of its market share in front of Android tablets whose market share has increased almost 10 times. Android tablet sales increased from 100.000 units per quarter to 2.1 million units, the Samsung Galaxy Tab being the "engine" of this growth that will continue in the months to come.
"The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the main driver of Android success," said Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics. "Tablet makers like Android because of its perceived low cost and an accompanying range of compelling media services such as YouTube and Google Maps." In November, Samsung revealed that sales of the Galaxy Tab had reached 600,000 in the first month of availability. Last week, Samsung announced that it had sold 2 million tablets in the fourth quarter.
Although Apple sold 3 times more tablets than the competition, it still managed to lose a good part of its market share. Motorola XOOM, BlackBerry PlayBook or Toshiba Tablet will be serious competitors for iPad 2 and Apple will soon find itself in an unfair fight against an entire platform with dozens of products. The iPad had a spectacular start because it was the best and almost the only usable tablet on the market, but the iPad 2 may not be so well received if Apple fails to implement some features that are not found in the new Android tablets.
What do you think, will iPad 2 have the same success?
UPDATE: Read this article, the information present above are not current.
