Apple extends tablet market lead Don't write off Apple's competitors in the tablet market just yet. While the iPad may have regained much of the strong lead it lost to Android slabs during 2011, its rivals were showing the strongest growth in Q2 2012. According to new numbers from market watcher IDC, Apple remains the number one tablet supplier, having …
Results for Q2 in which the new iPad was released ...
Q3 results I expect will show a completely different picture.
I analyse sales data at a large UK retailer. On first day of release they shipped 1700 Nexus 7s and have been shipping 500 a day since then.
iPad sales have never gone above 130 a day and have dropped off over 25% in the last couple of weeks.
While the Q3 should show a swing away from Apple, if they show the Nexus with almost four times the share of the iPad then I'll personally buy you twenty of them, and a luxury mansion to house them in.
The Nexus 7 is a fantastic product that'll do very well but markets just don't shift that quickly.
"All those lesser players together accounted for 12.3 per cent of the market in Q2 2012, down from almost a quarter of the market in Q2 2011. Moral: punters want brand-name tablets, folks. That brand may be Windows 8 or it may not."
But for the punters who are shallow enough to put brand name at the top of their requirements, that brand name has to be Apple.
And there are plenty of others who are more interested in getting a decent amount of "bang-per-buck" rather than paying for a brand, witnessed by the way the Asus branded Nexus 7s are flying off the shelves.
On the contrary, the brand of the Nexus 7 is 'Nexus'. Google have invested a lot of time and energy in building up that brand. 'Android' is another brand.
The concept of bang per buck isn't necessarily misplaced but it's safer to assume it's being misused whenever you see it in forums like these. Consumers don't care about megahertz or gigabytes; the Nexus 7 is doing well because it's a brand people trust and because the megahertz/gigabytes gang have spent the last three years producing predictably awful tablets, creating pent up demand for an Android product that isn't rubbish.
An Ipad 2 refurb, would have preferred an Android tablet but too many manufacturers push them out and forget about them. If you are lucky, you might get 1 OS update, probably next to no accessories etc. Apple update their SW and plenty of extras available to no brainer for me. Almost went for a SGT2 but decided against for the reasons above.
Where once android tablets were abysmal (anyone remember the tablet Toshiba called the Polio because it was crippled? the original 7" Galaxy Tab?), now they are merely naff iPad knockoffs, the Nexus 7 aside which actually looks kind of competent.
Android: catching up fast.
Fact of the matter is, the only thing that is going to save Apple now is if they come out with a 7" tablet. Having a 10" and 7", and the 4.8" S3.. the 7" is the sweet spot of devices. It fits in the hand just enough, big enough screen to be used for everything except perhaps a long email (assuming you have a bluetooth keyboard to type it in with), and the price is right.. at least for anything other than apple. The Nexus 7 is a beast.. the Android 4.1 OS is about as good as it gets, easily surpassing IOS5.. it's easy to use, still offers all the freedom of android (albeit in a better layout than previous versions if only slightly), and the hardware is the best on the market. I am sure Kindle Fire 2 will be something similar in hardware, and it's already done tremendous. The Samsung 7" Tab is good too, but not enough of an update to match the Nexus 7 to be a contender. Asus 7" will be very similar to nexus 7 for obvious reasons and should do pretty well too.
It's inevitable that apple will eventually fall into the same place they do with computers.. they have premium prices for products that aren't any better and typically subpar to much cheaper alternatives, but their name and style keeps them highly sought after by a select few. Right now, they are still riding (but diminishing) their iphone/ipad wave.. it took a couple years but like in the computer world, the competition has caught up and surpassed their offerings for more affordable prices.
Thus.. Apple's only chance of staying dominant is to offer a 7" or so tablet.
Not sure I understand.. are you saying that android tablets don't sell well.. and if so.. is it because they don't do what the majority want them to? Last I checked my Transformer and Nexus 7 were easier to do things on than my wife's ipad. In the case that we had the same app on the two devices.. it was near identical in how it operated. As far as I know, ipad/iphone.. the only way to do anything it to launch an application. How is that any different than an application being launched on any android device? If the app does the same thing, then what's the difference?
@jarjarbinks, I understood from the OP not that the other tablets CAN'T do what the iPad does, they can but that the majority think the iPad does it better, hence the vastly larger sales of the iPad over the others.
Individually, you may find otherwise, I might too but the OP is pointing to the sales figures and whether you like iPads or not, the sales figures cannot be disputed, the majority buy them, not the alternative.
I think the real lesson is that (some of) the brand-name manufacturers tend to make better kit. That's certainly true with with my Transformer Pad. Around these parts Asus isn't really a bigger brand than Acer but at the moment Acer don't really have anything that competes with Asus's offerings, even though both are using Android.
Another interesting thing, at least to me, was when I went to buy it the staff in the shop all knew what it was, why you would want to buy it and in fact the salesbloke explained how he used his to take his uni notes (he could have been blagging, of course). I got the impression they were moving a few. No one tried to sell me an iPad.
yeh - I think my Nexus 7 is great and I'm an appletard.
My totally unscientific pole of 'how many folk have I seen with em in the last 2 weeks' shows me quite a lot of nexus 7s - suggesting a pish load of folk have bought em.
After my Kindle Fire I got at xmas, I had almost given up on android, but it all seems to be working nearly as good as iOS now (though the keyboard, and text selection,etc is still not as good).
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