Android Gains on iPad in Global Tablet Market Share

In 2011 overall, global tablet shipments totaled 66.9 million units -- a 260 percent increase from 2010, according to Strategy Analytics. Moreover, consumers are increasingly buying iPads and Android tablets in preference to PCs. While Apple's iPad remained on top with 58 percent of the market, Android tablets gained on the iPad with 39 percent.

Global shipments of tablets reached 26.8 million units in the final three months of 2011 -- a 150 percent year-over-year surge from the year-earlier period, according to Strategy Analytics. Though Apple's iPad continued to remain on top with a 58 percent market share, unit shipments of Android tablets reached record levels.

During the fourth quarter, Apple shipped 15.4 million iPads. However, Android-based devices captured a 39 percent share -- up from 29 percent in the same quarter of 2010, said Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston.

"Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes," Mawston said. "Global Android tablet shipments tripled annually to 10.5 million units."

According to mobile app analytics firm Flurry, however, Android's huge leap in tablet market share is due in major part to Amazon's introduction of the Kindle Fire last October. Claiming to track more than 20 percent of all Internet consumer sessions on over 90 percent of all Android devices each day, Flurry believes the Kindle Fire has already reached parity with Samsung's Galaxy Tab offerings.

Flurry defines an Android tablet session as the launch and subsequent exit, or pause for more than 10 seconds, of an app. Last November, Samsung's Galaxy Tab models accounted for 63 percent of all Android tablet app sessions monitored by the firm. By the end of January, however, Amazon's Kindle Fire and Samsung's Galaxy Tab platforms were effectively tied with 35.7 percent and 35.6 percent session shares, respectively.

"In January, after the holiday boom in devices and in apps, we see that strong adoption of Kindle Fire, combined with significant downloads driven from the Amazon App Store, resulted in a massive surge in session usage that just edges out the Galaxy Tab," said Flurry Vice President Peter Farago.

Farago attributed the Kindle Fire's rapid rise to Amazon's ability to generate fanfare surrounding the device's unveiling.

"Amazon's launch of Kindle Fire had more in common with an Apple-style launch than it did with aligning with the Android system," he wrote in a blog.

Kindle Fire is already driving over 2.5 times more paid downloads of the top 10 Android apps to consumers than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, according to Flurry's new study. Amazon's decision to aggressively price the $199 Kindle Fire is already paying off for the online retailer as well as app developers.

"For tablets, the Amazon App Store can already deliver more direct revenue to developers than the Android Market [even though] Flurry estimates that the active number of Galaxy Tabs in the market is at least twice that of the Kindle Fire," Farago wrote.

In 2011 overall, global tablet shipments totaled 66.9 million units -- a 260 percent increase from 2010, according to Strategy Analytics. Moreover, consumers are increasingly buying tablets in preference to netbooks and even entry-level notebooks or desktops.

The surge had significant impact on fourth quarter PC sales in the United States as well as on a global basis. According to preliminary figures from Gartner, for example, worldwide mobile PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011 rose a mere 0.6 percent year-over-year while U.S. mobile PC shipments fell 7.9 percent.

"The popularity of tablets and smartphones were inhibitors of consumer PC shipments," said Mika Kitagawa, a principal analyst at the research firm. "Most U.S. households already owned at least one PC -- or multiple PCs," [and there wasn't] a good reason for many consumers to get a new PC or replace an existing one," she said in an e-mail Monday.

Posted: 2012-02-01 @ 12:27pm PT

Apple's marketing problem going forward is now they've become the "Borg" entity that Microsoft was 15 years ago. It's no longer sexy to own an Apple product - it's become very mainstream. With Jobs' passing, the perception is growing they have, or will shortly, jump the shark, and it's feeding a growing interest and demand for alternative products/ecosystems, e.g. Android and Windows 8. I suspect Apple's in for a "lost decade" of their own, following in Microsoft's footsteps. Unlike Microsoft however, they won't have the enterprise core business to fall back on.

Posted: 2012-01-30 @ 10:09pm PT

Look back in history how many have tried the 'locked in' approach - and failed. Steve Jobs admitted to being the 'Pied Piper'. Apple got the jump on the market (they developed the iPad long before the iPhone), but iTunes will be their downfall.

Posted: 2012-01-30 @ 2:21pm PT

Wrong. Android "shipments" to retailers are not the same as actual iPad "sales" to customers and Kindle sales don't count either -- they are eReaders with limited functionality, not more capable tablet computers. This same, inaccurate Strategy Analytics data is being mis-reported all over the Web. Apple still retains 80-90% tablet market share.