A new report from Gartner says the Apple iOS will dominate table device sales until 2015 - and will account for more than half of annual tablet sales for the next three years.
69% of tablets sold this year are expected to have the Apple iOS, dropping to 47% in 2015. Meanwhile the Google Android OS is forecast to almost double its share of the media tablet market from 20% in 2011 to 39% in 2015.
Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said “Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem. Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.”
Worldwide sales of media tablets to end-users by OS (thousands of units)
|
OS
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2015
|
|
Apple iOS
|
14,766
|
47,964
|
68,670
|
138,497
|
|
Market share (%)
|
83.9
|
68.7
|
63.5
|
47.1
|
|
Android
|
2,502
|
13,898
|
26,382
|
113,457
|
|
Market Share (%)
|
14.2
|
19.9
|
24.4
|
38.6
|
|
MeeGo
|
107
|
788
|
1,271
|
3,057
|
|
Market share (%)
|
0.6
|
1.1
|
1.2
|
1.0
|
|
webOS
|
0
|
2,796
|
4,245
|
8,886
|
|
Market share (%)
|
0.0
|
4.0
|
3.9
|
3.0
|
|
PlayBook QNX
|
0
|
3,901
|
7,134
|
29,496
|
|
Market share (%)
|
0.0
|
5.6
|
6.6
|
10.0
|
|
Other Operating Systems
|
234
|
432
|
510
|
700
|
|
Market share (%)
|
1.3
|
0.6
|
0.5
|
0.2
|
|
Total Market
|
17,610
|
69,780
|
108,211
|
294,093
|
Source: Gartner (April 2011)
Gartner has defined a ‘media tablet’ as a device whose primary focus is the consumption of media. It’s based on a touch-screen display with a diagonal dimension that is over 5 inches and is designed for handheld use (i.e. screen size up to around 15 inches). The media tablet runs a ‘lightweight’ OS such as Android/ iOS or a subset of a fully-featured OS such as Windows.