The first quarter of this year has seen a huge number of tablets sold, 40.6 million. For several years, the iPad was the unquestioned king of the tablet market. Even a year ago, Apple maintained 63.1% of the total tablet marketplace sales. As of this year, however, android has made some impressive gains.
Apple sold a total of 19.5 million iPads during the first quarter 2013, including both full-size and mini models. That was enough to give the company a 48.2% stake of the overall sales of tablets. Nice to still be first, but it’s a far cry from the 63.1% dominance of a year ago. Android surged to sales of 17.6 million, overall. This leads to a 43.4% share of the market. 48.2% versus 43.3%, quite a change from a year ago, when android only had 34.2%.
Surprisingly, even Microsoft’s Surface and Surface Pro tablets managed to grab a 7.5% piece of the pie in the first quarter. Considering how poorly reviewed the Surface tablets have generally been, and their higher prices, it’s not too shabby an effort by the Redmond, WA company. Plans for a smaller, 7 or 8 inch Windows 8 tablet for later this year have started to circulate, also.
It’s really not surprising to see android gain so much of the market, really. If you want to make tablets, and are a company in China, India, Korea, or any other country, you can’t just use iOS, but you can use Google’s android fairly easily. So the marketplace is flooded with cheap android tablets, while Apple remains the only producer of iPads. The only real surprise is that Microsoft has 7.5% of the market, despite high prices and mostly negative reviews. Whether that’s just due to an initial sales surge, or if it can continue to grow it’s share, remains to be seen. But it would appear that android is poised to take over the tablet sales leadership, it’s just a question of when.
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