The iPad is increasingly looking like a big success story for Apple though investors have been largely ignoring the fact due to their fixation with the iPhone, which fell three million units short of predictions in Q2 2012.
During the June quarter, Apple sold 17 million iPads, an 84 percent increase over the 9.25 million iPads sold in the year-ago quarter and up from the 11.8 million iPads shipped in Q1 2012. In just twelve months, Apple increased its share by almost seven percentage points, from 61.5 percent in Q2 2011 to a whopping 68.2 percent in Q2 2012.
Samsung and Asus also gained, the former on the heels of its Galaxy Tab lineup that Apple thinks copies the iPad’s look and feel, and the latter based on strong sales of own products and the Nexus 7 which Asus makes for Google…
Per IDC’s data, Samsung’s tablet shipments grew by 117.6 percent annually and Asus grew 115.5 percent during the same period. Asus shipped an estimated 885,000 units during the second quarter of this year (397,048 units a year ago).
IDC pegged Samsung’s tablet shipments at 2.4 million units, up from 1.1 million units a year ago. Note that Samsung stopped reporting smartphone and tablet shipments last summer for competitive reasons.
Amazon, which is said to be readying half a dozen new tablets, including a ten-inch mode to take on the iPad on the high-end, rebounded in Q2 2012 with an estimated 1.3 million tablets.
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet Tracker, August 2, 2012.
So why are people largely ignoring non-Apple tablets? It could be because all the other tablets suck or due to the fact that Apple caught competitors on the wrong foot with the iPad’s release in April 2010.
According to an IDC analyst:
The vast majority of consumers continue to favor the iPad over competitors, and Apple is seeing increasingly strong interest in the device from vertical markets — especially education.
While iPad shipment totals are beginning to slow a bit in mature markets where the device saw early traction, growth in other regions is clearly more than making up the difference.
IDC also expects a new Apple tablet later this year (emphasis mine):
In addition to major new products from Amazon and quite likely Apple, we can also expect an influx of Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows RT-based tablets starting in late October. If anything, there’s a real risk that people will have too many options from which to choose this holiday season.
Consumers baffled by the differences between Amazon and Google versions of Android, or Windows 8 and Windows RT, may well default to market leader Apple. Or they may simply choose to remain on the sideline for another cycle.
Global tablet shipments were up 66 percent annually to 25 million units, IDC estimated.
IDC’s numbers for the iPad are nearly identical to last week’s findings by research firm Strategy Analytics which found out that the iPad rose from 62 percent in the year-ago quarter to 68 percent global market share in Q2 2012.
Likewise, a Canalys research revealed that Apple emerged victorious as the top computer vendor globally if you count iPads as computers, accounting for nearly one in five desktops, netbooks, notebooks and tablets sold during the June quarter.
Who said the tablet was a passing fad?