Figures from Gartner forecast that worldwide media tablet sales will total 118.9 million units this year, a 98% increase from last year’s end-user sales of 60 million units.
Apple iPad devices are expected to account for 61.4% of all tablet sales (73 million tablets) in 2012. Android follows with 31.9%; just under 38 million tablets. Microsoft tablets are projected to account for 4.1% of media tablet sales this year, increasing to 11.8% of sales by the end of 2016.
Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said “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. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat. It appears that this year competitors have waited to see what Apple would bring out — because there were very few announcements of new media tablets at either the Consumer Electronics Show or Mobile World Congress. 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 enterprise and consumer markets."
Enterprise sales of media tablets are expected to account for about 35% of all tablets sold in 2015.
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