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Android Beats iOS As the Top Tablet OS

Posted by Unknown on from the gnu-feeling-left-out dept.

sfcrazy writes "Linux is on a roll. After conquering the smartphone space, Android is now dominating the tablet space. According to a new study by Gartner, 'the tablet growth in 2013 was fueled by the low-end smaller screen tablet market, and first time buyers; this led Android to become the No. 1 tablet operating system (OS), with 62 percent of the market.'" Also, everyone is buying tablets.(~200 million sold in 2013 vs ~115 million in 2012). Microsoft still only has 2% of the tablet market.

4 of 487 comments (clear)

  1. The year of the Linux Tablet by Niterios · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is finally here! Now we just need it to be an open platform.

  2. Re:ANDROID != LINUX by farble1670 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ~/src (develop) $ adb shell
    root@android:/ # uname -a /system/bin/sh: uname: not found
    127|root@android:/ #

  3. Re:But where are all the Androids? by Solandri · · Score: 3, Funny

    Despite this claim to large number shipped I just am not seeing Android tablets out in the hands of users. I've seen a couple (count them, two) Kindles in the real world.

    Meanwhile I've seen many hundreds of Apple's iPad's and thousands of iPhones, iPodTouches, etc.

    Something's not right with the statistics given in the article. It just doesn't match the real world. So is this a Shipped vs Sales confusion?

    These are annual sales figures. That is, they're not the number of tablets in use, they're the first derivative of the number of tablets in use. People don't buy a new tablet every year - they keep it around for a few years. So the tablets you'll see in use are a weighted culmination of 2011, 2012, and 2013 sales, which if I remember were about 85% iPad, 60% iPad, and now 36% iPad

    Despite what the Apple apologists have posted above, the important thing is the trend. And it's pretty clear that the trend is down for Apple (in market share - growth in the market means their unit sales are still increasing, just nowhere near as quickly as Android's unit sales are). They will need to come out with better products with better features (or lower prices) and more options (the iPad Mini was a good step) if they want to regain the market lead or even hang on to their current market share. Of course Apple being Apple, they might not care about that. They may be content having just 5% of the market if it's a very lucrative 5%.

    And about 2/3rds of phones I see in use are Android, about 2/3rds of the tablets are iPads, and the last time I saw an iPod Touch was in a drawer gathering dust.

  4. Re:But where are all the Androids? by Wild_dog! · · Score: 3, Funny

    I see lots of tablets at elementary schools.
    Seems like all the kids have them now since they got them as stocking stuffers.
    My kids keep asking why they can't get tablets and take them to school.
    Seems they are the only ones without devices at recess.
    hahahaha