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Android Catching Up In the Tablet Market
TyFoN writes "Year to year, the iPad market share is down from 94.3 percent to 61.3 percent while Android is up about the same, going from 2.9 percent to 30.1 percent in the same period. 'Some 4.6 million Android-based tablets shipped in this year's second quarter as compared with just around 100,000 in the year-ago quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. ...the tablet OS market as a whole grew a whopping 331 percent in the last year and Apple grew right along with it in terms of unit shipments. Tablet makers shipped 3.5 million in the second quarter of 2010, with Apple easily leading the charge with 3.2 million iPads shipped. The number of units shipped exploded to 15.1 million in this past quarter— Apple was a bit behind the pace of that growth, but still managed to ship an impressive 9.3 million iOS-based tablets. Microsoft, meanwhile, had the third largest share of the global tablet OS market at 4.6 percent, with about 700,000 Windows 7-based tablets shipped in the recent quarter.'"
The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I didn't even know there WAS a Windows 7 tablet. I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago and didn't even see one. Where are they selling these things?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are built on cheap hardware and run a version of Android developed for phones, Honeycomb tablets have so far priced themselves out of the market. Here's hoping Google and the manufacturers will pick up on that.
Units shipped, which is all this article reports, does not equal market share. All those Xooms sitting on Best Buy shelves? Those are driving the supposed "catching up " in this article.
Is this by units or money? Because while they do have some higher end tablets, the majority of Android tablets tend to a lower price bracket than the iOS devices, which is going to skew statistics a bit if its by money instead of units sold.
I am curious how they got to those numbers; namely, what do they mean by "shipped". Do they mean produced and sent to stores? Or actually sold to customers?
We know how many iPad's are actually bought by people; but how much of that 30% this analyst is claiming Android has is retail channels filling up but not actually being bought? Where are they getting their numbers?
I'm not saying there aren't plenty of people who may be interested in some of the latest Android offerings, but a 2:1 ratio of iPad's:Android's doesn't at all jive with what I've seen or heard in reality. (Granted, my anecdotal evidence isn't all that more awesomer then your anecdotal evidence)
Strategy Analytics is talking about units shipped. Unit shipments aren't the same as actual sales to customers. Microsoft used that same word-twisting when they tried to convince everyone that Vista was doing well. As John Gruber pointed out yesterday, what Strategy Analytics is calling market share is actually "shipment share." That's not market share in the way most people think of it. If you go by actual sales, the iPad has sold almost 30 million total, while Android tablets have only sold about 1.35 million.
I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page. Sales of the iPad have tripled since last year, at 9.25 million, and iPhone sales more than doubled. iPad sales have been so successful that retailers reserved inventory space for them at the expense of PCs. PC shipments declined by about 6%, and the PC industry overall declined by 4.2%. I think that's the biggest untold story of all in this--after decades of growth, the PC is in a downward trend because of the iPad.
Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be. It can be used to paint a negative picture where there isn't one. It can also be twisted by citing units shipped rather than sold. The iPad is doing better than ever and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. I realize that Slashdot is historically pro-Linux and will present Linux-based products as always "catching up" or being on the cusp of taking over, but there's just no evidence of that happening at this point in time.
I'm still waiting for my 3.1 upgrade on my Motorola XOOM and 3.2 is on its way already so my SD slot is thus as useless as an 5 1/4 floppy . This is the single most sucking aspect of Android Tablets (and phones) and is driving me away from the party. My wifes iPad2 might be less sophisticated but at least Apple hangs noone out to dry. I'm convinced this will eventually catch up with Android when everyone had the experience once of empty update promises of which HTC Hero is king!
The iPad has barely been out for a year -- how does trying to do a comparison like this make any sense at all?
The key word here is SHIPPED, not sold.
All "tablets" reported from AAPL's quarterly were SOLD, not merely shipped and waiting to be bought.
Whatevers though, small point, and many Android tablets will be sold but the fragmentation will not abate.
IIRC, the Nook doesn't run Honeycomb. My bet is that the vast majority of Android tablets now out there are Nooks, of which only a few have been hacked to be stock Android tablets. The most recent sales figures I can find for the nook imply that 3M were sold as of last March, so the sales of that one tablet dwarf the numbers estimated above
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
It may be less, but I doubt it's "dramatically" less.
Stated "shipping share" is an order of magnitude more than the number sold - read the article, it uses Google's own activation numbers and device counts to arrive at that position.
Now granted perhaps a lot of Android tablet owners are collecting them for posterity and never removing them from the box. But somehow I do not think that is the case.
Tablet makers aren't feverishly pushing them out just to lose all their money as they rot on the shelves.
That certainly is not what they HOPE to do. But the market can have other ideas.
Blackberry is shipping a lot of Playbooks but those aren't selling either. Obviously they did not put them out to "rot on shelves" either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page.
I'm not; You and I were around when Slashdot was more even tempered than it is today. As soon as I saw that "Shipping Share" article I knew it would be on Slashdot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Considering there are $99 Android 2.1 tablets that you can get in stores like Walgreens or CVS, is it any wonder they're "gaining marketshare"?
They're on the low end of the spectrum, but they do browse the web and can play Angry Birds.
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The ones sold by Walwart, ASDA etc but the truckload. The ones priced at less than $150/£100.
IMHO, the Tablet/fondleslab market should be segmented.
At the top, things like the Playbook, Galaxy Tab and iPad.
etc etc.
Then we might get some more realistic figures especially if the measurements were done by units sold rather than shipped.
If the Galaxy Tab was a bit cheaper I'd buy one.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
What proportion of users do you think bother "activating" their tablets?
Every one that turns on one, because they contact Google servers to check for updates and other things. Just what did you think "activation" meant in the context of tablets anyway?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
all the people that bought into g tablet have effectively been abandoned by viewsonic.
viewsonic could not resist the temptation of adding their "special touches" to otherwise generally serviceable 2.2 that rendered the unit utterly unusable (slow, crashes often) and compelled people to either return the unit or root the unit and overwrite the stock rom.
moral of the story - don't buy stuff you expect fw updates from 2 bit companies like viewsonic, because you won't get any.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Did you even know there was a Windows 7 tablet?
Seems like a good place to make a fanboi plug for my HP TouchPad. I've been waiting for a nice tablet that would let me avoid the walled garden and, so far, I'm very happy with the TouchPad. Three ways to develop your own apps 1) SDK - which is javascript/HTML widgets, 2) PDK - which is C++ and OpenGL, and 3) a hybrid mix of the two. Very easy to create professional-looking applications, Linux-based, multi-tasking WebOS, and pretty good selection of commercial apps so it should be attractive to lots of slashdotters.
That extra competition will do nothing for Android pricing. Right now Android tablets are already facing full competition pressure from the iPad. Android prices aren't high because makers are ignoring the iPad and only pricing against each other. Android prices are high because Apple is buying components they took options on years ago in lots of ten million. Android makers are buying components based on current availability in lots of hundred thousands or even ten thousands.
FWIW, I have a eee Transformer tablet with battery pack / keyboard dock and I love it.
If you'd prefer to have an Android tablet, this one is pretty good IMHO.
It just got updated to 3.1 and likes USB devices. Doesn't work with a USB DVD drive - but mice and hard drives it has no problem with.
HTH
FWIW I won't buy a single Apple product until they stop trying to sue their competition and sometimes suppliers out of business. Even if their market share is up, it's pretty easy to see the greed at work. Once they get complete dominance that greed will be turned towards reduction in product quality.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
As I understand the article on zacks.com, it means that PC shipments were down in the United States but up slightly worldwide: "However, strong upside in PC shipments to Asia, Latin America and Japan offset these declines."
Apple also makes money on the applications for iPads, Android manufactures don't have this additional revenue stream.
You should refrain from purchasing any product whatsoever that is made by a company that is suing one of its competitors.
The first suit I can remember was Polaroid vs. Kodak. Everyone remembers the amazing quality of Polaroid cameras, right? How they are a powerful, innovative player in the instant camera market place of the 21st century?
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Once they get complete dominance that greed will be turned towards reduction in product quality.
And you're basing that one their history of having done so in the iPod market, right? I mean, they continue to have 70% market share in the music player business, and it's obvious that the product quality has really taken a nose dive in the time that they've been on top. All of these new iPod nano and iPod Touch devices have really set the market back by a number of years, rather than driving the innovation and quality forward.
Or maybe you're basing it on what they've done with their 90% market share of the $1000+ PC business? If so, you're definitely on the money, since Macs are known for their shoddy workmanship and poor quality. I can't think of any consumer reports or user satisfaction polls that have spoken favorably of them in a number of years. Once they nailed that market, they just decided to rest on their laurels and stop making decent stuff. Lion is simply the latest iteration in a long line of low-quality operating systems, and I have yet to find a review that speaks well of it. Hell, I'm such a lemming that I installed it already, and I've been self-loathing ever since then. The experience of using it is equitable to pulling teeth.
Apple's strategy all along has been to dominate a market, then release crap periodically, and it's definitely worked for them.
</massive sarcasm>
Or, for the less sarcastic version, Apple has demonstrated that if greed and a love of money is your motivating factor, then putting out high quality products is the best way to satisfy your desires. If they start to put out crap, the iPad will follow the path that the Mac took in the early days, and will quickly be eclipsed by competitors. Apple is at its best when it's competing, and history shows us that when they rest, they fall. But for now, we have no reason for saying that Apple is planning to rest anytime soon, since your examples of greed have yet to generate the effect that you indicate they will produce, despite having been present for a number of years already.
A/Honeycomb's market share in tablets sounds a bit weak in the middle. There's little lock-in (that is, after all, one of Google's tenets), and your data ends up being silo'd per application / ISV rather than per machine. For example, my Kindle books will download and work fine on anything. Apple at least has the iTunes lock-in, which is evil but great for them.
Because of this, I think Honeycomb's market share may erode significantly if Microsoft can truly follow through on its Win8 tablet strategy. Win8 would definitely have lock-in, and so its market share would be inherently harder to steal.
Yeah, I have yet to pay a single red cent for an Apple product, so I can't exactly say that I know anything about the quality. I won't buy a smartphone without a keyboard, I hate what they've done to the smartphone market to be honest. I've thought the iPods were outrageously priced to begin with, and wouldn't waste my money on such tripe anyway.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Let's assume that Gruber's wrong(I have no reason to believe he is; I'm a huge Gruber fanboy and his logic's pretty good).
This means that 61% of the tablet market is owned by 1 vendor, and between Moto, HTC, B&N, RIM, Samsung, etc. that's at least 5 with the distinct possibility of way more vendors fighting for 39% of market share.
1 vendor, Apple, owns *atleast* a solid plurality of tablet market share if not an outright majority.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Sorry dude, but the Walgreens $99 tab can't even handle basic browsing on wi-fi. It barely has enough power to respond to user input on the cheap resistive touchscreen
Also it is not a "licensed" Android tablet so no access to the GMarket and because it is Android 1.6 OS, there are no Angry Birds for it.
Oh, I didn't have an issue with your personal preferences. To be clear, people who don't like Apple products are fine in my book, and I always advocate getting whatever works best for you (for me it's Macs, for others it's not, but it's all cool). All I took issue with were your claims that they'd suddenly start reducing product quality once they achieved market dominance, which is an idea that's not borne out by fact or history. Even if we go with your stance that their products are already "tripe", clearly you think there's room for sinking lower (else you wouldn't have mentioned reducing product quality), but I'd say that there are no indications that the quality of this tripe has changed at all. Whether you think the current quality is high or low, it still doesn't indicate that they reduce it once they dominate, which goes directly against what you attempted to argue.
B&N in their infite wisdom have not seen fit to sell it into a bigger market that is open to them.
viz Europe.
330Million People.
So your statement should read.
The Nook Color seems to be selling well in the US. Shame that the rest of the world do not get a look it.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Wonder why manufacturers are paying both Microsoft and Google for the right to use this free OS.
A: Because they can't get iOS at any cost.
Am I the only one who couldn't care less about tablets?
giggity
I would say that Apple went south pretty bad in the late 80's, but it looks like they've learned their lesson there. By tripe I mean their consumer grade stuff. They made more expensive MP3 players than were on the market, packed their higher end iPods with notebook hard drives which were destined for premature failure from people being active while using them. I would have considered buying a Mac until they stopped shipping them with Power processors.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
This could be the whole PC evolution playing out again in tablets. It is easy to forget that Apple had an early lead in PCs and then Bill Gates ate them alive by licensing DOS to run on a variety of hardware platforms. This situation seems almost like a play-by-play rerun. But to make it worse for Apple, this time around the DOS equivalent is "free" for manufacturers.
How can anyone still drag up this comparison after the iPod, the iPhone, and Mac's strong performance today? It's more aptly called the Apple evolution, and we don't yet know how it will turn up.
I wasn't a fan of the iPod touch either until I tried my son's first generation iPod touch and found that Apple had snuck a unix work station with an innovative interface onto a hand held device. Yes, you can play your music, watch porn, play games etc. You can also ssh into your server and accomplish useful work, the browser is actually useful and standards compliant and thousands (more?) of developers are applying their ingenuity to creating new tools for your use.
I have a Droid phone with a keypad. If it doesn't have a keypad, then I can't do anything meaningful for work with it. It's amazing how inexpensive used smart phones are on eBay. The thing that I like least about Apple's direction with portable devices is the absence of a keyboard or keypad. I refuse to use a virtual keypad, I've tried it on friends phones. The fact that I didn't own the devices was the only thing that kept me from flushing them.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
We are we comparing an operating system to a platform.
If you're going to compare Android to something, compare android to iOS. If you're going to compare tablets, compare company to company. It's just as disingenuous to make comparisons of this type as it is to compare Mac computer sales to Windows.
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"Once they get complete dominance that greed will be turned towards reduction in product quality". Yeah, the iPod touch is the worst quality iPod ever !!!!!!!!!!!!!
We can see that you are tripe expert.
The fact that Android tablets are taking so long to eat into Apple's market share is down to Google.
About a year ago, Google announced that Froyo was "not optimized for tablets", and that vendors should not sell Android tablets until Honeycomb came out. As a result, device makers and software developers delayed their tablet projects, and customers delayed their tablet purchases. Google made sure that Froyo tablets would not succeed by prohibiting them from accessing Android Market. (The Galaxy Tab was exempted.) This wouldn't have been so bad if the release of Honeycomb had not been several months later than originally expected, and if the first release had not been buggy. It's only in the past couple of weeks that Honeycomb 3.2 came out, giving us a Honeycomb that's truly ready for market.
As it happens, Froyo works pretty well on tablets, so Google's announcement was a disastrous, and I dare say rather stupid, mistake. They shot themselves in the foot, and postponed the development of the Android tablet market by about a year, giving the iPad time to become much more entrenched than it would have been otherwise.
You can not own any phone, tablet, or PC because yo will not find a single manufacturer who has not sued someone.
Many people (including me) felt the same way. Once you take the plunge and use item for about a week, you will wonder why you thought it mattered.
The iPod touch is more a mini-tablet or a phone without being a phone than it is an MP3 player. It was more a market test to determine the viability of a larger device without phone capabilities.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
If a small keyboard is a high priority, your decision is probably made for you. It might be worth mentioning that iOS devices work well with most bluetooth keyboards which come in a variety of shapes and sizes. I do tend to use my iPad rather than iPod because the onscreen keyboard is so much better (almost touch typing in landscape mode). In any case I do appreciate Android users since it keeps Apple from getting even more comfortable.
Years ago, I let our Dell rep talk me into a tablet from Motion PC. Never again....
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Recent Android tablets are priced lower than comparable iPad - 16Gb Transformer can be had for less than $400, for example, and 32Gb IdeaPad K1 goes for $500.
This is a common myth.
Personally I'm waiting for the Eee pad slider. That has been delayed like 3 times already but it looks like exactly what I want.
With Apple you get one choice. With Android you'll soon have a couple dozen viable choices.
That's what we heard about the iPod. It never happened. That's because people really don't care that much about choice beyond a certain amount. Look at the 20+ consecutive year-over-year quarterly growth of Mac sales, beating out the PC in growth every single time.
In other words, Apple is outpacing the entire industry in PC sales, and has been for years now.
Further, that competition will tend to drive down the price for the Android ecosystem as compared to Apple.
Not for equivalent hardware. The only way Android tablets will be notably cheaper than iPads is by cutting corners. Apple has the best deals on the planet for components. No one can compete with the iPad on price.
This could be the whole PC evolution playing out again in tablets. It is easy to forget that Apple had an early lead in PCs and then Bill Gates ate them alive by licensing DOS to run on a variety of hardware platforms.
Not quite. The Macintosh never had a lead over PCs. DOS already outsold the Mac long before Compaq cloned the IBM PC.
This situation seems almost like a play-by-play rerun. But to make it worse for Apple, this time around the DOS equivalent is "free" for manufacturers.
The only reason the PC beat the Mac in the early days is because the PC was better suited for the market (which at the time was business). That's it. Today, iOS is better suited for the market, which is primarily consumer.
Google has data from devices that accessed Android Market:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
Honeycomb accounts for 0.9% total (3.0 + 3.1).
"Reading that line, you're automagically accepting this EULA"
Stated "shipping share" is an order of magnitude more than the number sold - read the article, it uses Google's own activation numbers and device counts to arrive at that position
I doubt that every single ultra-cheap no-name Android-based tablet uses officially licensed Android and is detectable through activation.
I think that there's a vast number of devices on which manufacturer slap the free opensource version of Android, and sell it as-is without any activation.
And these device are in a ultra-low price range which makes them attractive on their own, even if they can't compete feature wise with bigger Androids, nor with iPads.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]