Originally Posted by Stuart_h:
“I think that's a fairly niaive approach. Q4 2012 their market share had (allegedly) slipped from nearly 100% to about 60%.”
I think it's naive to think that Apple will lose its tablet market crown anytime soon.
As Gordmond said, Apple's overall market share only decreased due to the total size of the market increasing.
Actual sales of the iPad are going up, and up, and up, and up, every single quarter.
The iPad continues to sell more than the competition combined, with over 15 millions iPads sold in Apple's most recent quarter.
Not only was that far more units than any other tablet, it was more units sold than any single computer manufacturer sold PCs...including the three big boys HP, Dell, and Lenovo. The iPad beat them all.
The only non-Apple tablet that could be called a success is the Kindle Fire, which some may not consider a true Android tablet as it runs a highly customised Amazon version of 2.x, not even Honeycomb let alone ICS.
But its sales still pale in comparison to those of the iPad.
After the Fire, the next best selling would be the Galaxy Tab 10.1... although its sales haven't been amazing (it doesn't take much to beat the Xoom or PlayBook), and Samsung has even admitted it has not had success in the tablet market yet.
Apple does not need to catch up with anyone else. They all need to catch up with Apple.
Originally Posted by ACU:
“They do need to catch up. They thought they didnt in the smartphone market. Now Android has overtaken ios. The same will happen in the tablet market. Its only a matter of time. In a couple of years time android will have a greater market share than ios. Apple are aware of this, thus why the patent war is going on. Apple are trying their best to slow the growth of Android in the tablet market. They may slow it, but its inevitable that one day android will have a larger share of the tablet market.”
The tablet market is not the same as the smartphone market. It seems more like the MP3 player market.
Most people buy smartphones on a contract, heavily subsidised. As such, high-end Android phones are cheaper than the iPhone.
The tablet market is not the same. Most people just buy the tablet, they do not get it subsidised with a contract. As such, the high-end competition all tend to cost around the same price as the iPad (apart from the ones which failed miserably, and then had repeated price cuts to try and get people to buy them, such as the Xoom and PlayBook).
It's not just that which is different.
Apple's starting point in the market is far different from the smartphone market.
Apple
never dominated the smartphone market the way it continues to dominate the tablet market. It was a late comer to the smartphone market, going up against existing manufacturers such as Nokia and RIM, and existing OSes such as Symbian and WM5.
The current tablet market, however, was effectively created by Apple. It has dominated it since the beginning, and although its share has decreased, that is only because of the increase in size of the market itself. It still utterly dominates it, and still sells more tablets than all the competition, with sales continuing to increase every single quarter.
Apple does not need to catch up with anyone else. They all need to catch up with Apple.