While Apple releases its sales figures of iOS-based iPad regularly, other non-iOS based tablet manufacturers are hesitant to release their figures.
Apple’s iPad with its iOS has ruled the tablet market for long. The company has sold nearly 9.25 million iPad units in the third quarter of this year. The number of tablets sold by other companies is far less than the sales of iPad even if total the number of non-iOS tablets sold by all other tablet manufacturing companies. Generally, companies other than Apple don’t issue their sale figures. They only talk about number of shipments and these numbers are always low when compared with figures of Apple.
On the other hand, the most popular tablet in reach of commoners is the Android-based tablets. While Google provides the software companies like Asus, Acer, Amazon, Motorola and Samsung build the hardware. One has to go through a long process of mixing and matching figures in financial statements of different companies in order to get some idea about how many Android tablets have been sold and how many are lying in warehouses.
There are around 3.4 million Android tablets that have been sold to customers by September says a report released by SlashGear. This is nothing as compared to sale of more than 30 million iPads by Apple by this summer. Google’s CEO Larry Page told in a statement that Google has activated Android in 190 million devices with Android OS. Amazon’s latest $199 invention Kindle Fire has features Gingerbread which is the latest version Android. The Kindle Fire will be shipped after November 15 but already 250,000 tablets have purchased in the first five days after its availability in the market. At this rate of demand, the number of Android tablets in the market will double before the end of the current year. It is expected that release of tablet-friendly Windows 8 OS in 2012 will further boost the sales of non-iOS tablets
According to projected sales of 64 million tablets worldwide for 2011 by research firm Gartner, 47 million units or 73.4% share will be occupied by Apple’s iOS-based iPad. 11 million by tablets running on Android, RIM’s QNX-based BlackBerry Playboy will account for 3 million while HP’s discontinued webOS-Based TouchPad for 2 million. The rest is occupied by devices running on MeeGo and other operating systems. Gartner predicts that Apple’s share in the global tablet market will stay above 50% by year 2014. It will continue to lead the market in 2015 says the report of research firm.
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