Shipments of 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of
calendar 2011 gave Apple a commanding 58 percent of the market, while
Amazon's Kindle Fire helped heat up Android tablet shipments to a record
39 percent, according to one analysis.
Strategy Analytics released on Thursday the results of its latest
research for the tablet market in the December quarter. The data showed
global shipments jumped up to an all-time high of 27 million units
during the period, up 150 percent from 10.7 million in the year ago
quarter.
"Demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users remains
strong," said Peter King, Director at the market research firm, adding
that "Apple shrugged off the much-hyped threat from entry-level Android
models this quarter.”
Apple stunned Wall Street on Tuesday when it announced record sales
of 15.43 million iPads, a 111 percent increase year over year. The
analyst consensus leading up to Apple's announcement of its quarterly
results had stood at 13.5 million.
Though some industry watchers had predicted that
Amazon's Kindle Fire,
which came out in November, would affect sales of the iPad, Apple
executives said there had been no "obvious effect" of the device on
sales of its own tablet.
Google's Android operating system did reach a high last quarter,
however, fueled largely by the Fire. The platform's 10.5 million units
represented a 39 percent share of global tablet shipments during the
fourth quarter. As such, the firm's findings show that Android managed
to push the iPad below the 60 percent mark as had beenpreviously projected.
"Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by
numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been
driving volumes," said Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy
Analytics. "Android is so far proving relatively popular with tablet
manufacturers despite nagging concerns about fragmentation of Android’s
operating system, user-interface and app store ecosystem.”
Amazon said last month that it had sold millions
of Kindle Fire units, but declined to provide more specific sales
figures. Even without concrete numbers to go off of, analyst believe the
Fire jumped quickly into second place in the tablet market in its first
quarter of availability.
In third place was Microsoft, which managed a paltry one percent share of the tablet market in the quarter.
"The upcoming release of
Windows 8 this year cannot come quickly enough
for Microsoft, so its hardware partners can start competing more
effectively in the tablet space," the report read.
Tablet shipments for the whole year reached 66.9 million units, up 260
percent from last year's 18.6 million unit figure. The firm's research
also showed that consumers are increasingly preferring tablets over
netbooks and entry-level notebooks or desktops.
While non-iPad tablets are only now beginning to gain a foothold in the
market after several embarrassing flops from early entrants, Apple has
watched its touchscreen tablet surpass PC sales. The company sold more ipads in the fourth quarter than estimates say HP, the world's largest PC maker, sold computers.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week that he believes the iPad is
not threatened by low-end, limited-function tablets and instead poses a
threat to PCs.
"There will come a day when the tablet market in units is larger than the PC market," he predicted.
That day could come sooner than later, as sales of PCs declined by nearly
six percent
in the fourth quarter, according to research group Gartner, though
Apple's Mac lineup remained impervious and posted more than 20 percent
growth.
