Joining Strategy Analytics and IDC, research firm IHS iSuppli today published findings of its second-quarter tablet research. No surprises here, Apple’s iPad remain the tablet to beat as Apple grew its tablet market share from 58.0 percent in the year-ago quarter to 69.9 percent in the second quarter of this year.
It’s the highest number since the first quarter of last year, when Apple had a 70 percent share. Making Apple’s surge even more noteworthy is the fact that a year ago Apple had fewer competitors in the marketplace…
According to IHS iSuppli data, Apple shipped nearly seven out of every ten tablets during the second quarter, enough to up its share to nearly 70 percent. The figure is up a stunning 44.1 percent from 11.8 million the first quarter, IHS iSuppli noted.
Apple is making all the right moves to rebuild its dominant position in the tablet space. The company is pushing visual performance boundaries with the new iPad, while providing value customers with a lower-priced alternative, the iPad 2.
Second-ranked Samsung shipped 2.3 million tablets, enough to grab a 9.2 percent share, down from 10.8 percent sequentially.
Amazon shipped a million Kindle Fire tablets for the #3 slot with a 4.2 percent share.
Asus, the maker of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and its own Transformer line, shipped 688,000 units, grabbing just 2.8 percent share.
Barnes & Noble rounded up the top five with a 1.9 percent share on sales of 459,000 tablets.
Apple will be tough to beat due to its ecosystem, says the research firm:
A major component of Apple’s success to date is the company’s well-developed ecosystem of content and applications it had in place before entering the tablet market, and its absolute control of the hardware, software and operating system.
The tablet race is no longer about the hardware, it’s about the ecosystem.
When a customer buys a media tablet, what he or she is really doing is purchasing a key to that ecosystem, not just a piece of hardware.
Here’s your table.
As for Google’s Nexus 7 and Microsoft’s upcoming Surface tablet, “it’s possible that each of these vendors is entering the market intending to lead by example, rather than trying to be serious branded tablet competitors”, IHS iSuppli opines.
Another research by Analysys International pegged Apple’s China tablet share during the second quarter of this year at a whopping 72.6 percent share.
It was revealed during the Apple v. Samsung trial that nearly half of the surveyed respondents may mistaken Samsung’s Galaxy tablets for the iPad, per Apple witness Kent Van Liere.
Do you see other vendors giving the iPad a good run for its money in the near-term?