Tablet sales are expected to double in 2012, boosted by Apple’s continued dominance, Android growth and the entrance of 1st gen Windows 8 products.
Tablet sales are forecast to reach 118.9 million units in 2012, a 98% increase on 2011’s 60 million units, says a report by Gartner.
Apple will continue to dominate in 2012 with 61.4% market share, boosted by sales of its third generation iPad. Despite some controversies, The New iPad is expected to continue to sell well.
Android tablets are forecast to account for 31.9% of sales in 2012, hampered by the lack of dedicated tablet apps. Read CBR’s review of the Orange Tahiti tablet here.
Gartner’s consumer survey data shows that consumers are running many of their apps on their mobile phones and their tablets.
Microsoft tablets are projected to account for 4.1 per cent of media tablet sales this year, and grow to 11.8 per cent of sales by the end of 2016. This will see Microsoft’s offerings sail straight past RIMs struggling BlackBerry Playbook tablets running QNX (Or Blackberry Playbook OS/Blackberry 10), which will hold just 2%.
"Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
Milanesi believes that many tablet makers struggled to differentiate and compete on price in both hardware and in app and product ecosystems, only 60 million units actually reached end consumers.
Many vendors opted to sit back and see what Apple did with the iPad 3, rather than launching a model that could be obsolete instantly.
"Many vendors will wait for Windows 8 to be ready and will try to enter the market with a dual-platform approach, hoping that the Microsoft brand could help them in both the business and consumer markets," said Milanesi.
Sales of tablets into enterprise will account for about 35% of total tablet sales by 2015, according to Gartner’s report.
These sales will be dual-use, entering the workplace more as part of consumerisation by workers than as clear enterprise purchases.
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