Microsoft’s Windows tablets are likely to continue struggling against Apple and Android-based tablets after they failed to gain real ground in the tablet market.
Gartner said Microsoft only had a 2.1% of the worldwide tablet market in 2013, with a total of 4 million units in 2013, up from 1.16 million tablets sold in 2012.
Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, told CBR growth would remain quite limited unless Microsoft allowed Android apps to run on Windows.
"Even though they went from one to four million, still the volumes remain very low. The ecosystem around the Windows tablet isn’t strong enough and there is still a lack of meaningful applications," she said.
"If you go to the Windows store on a Windows 8 tablet you don’t have the same catalogue as you do for Android and iOS.
She added: "With consumer tablets, I’m not sure the Microsoft brand is strong enough either, and Microsoft is disadvantaged because other tablet vendors have a very large smartphone user base, while Windows’ phone share remains limited.
"Users want to have the same experience across devices, so it is very likely that an Android smartphone player is going to pick an Android tablet. So they also suffer from them being late within the smartphone market."
