“This marks a five-quarter high for Android’s media tablet market share,” iSuppli said. “The last time Android accounted for such a large portion of the media tablet was the first quarter of 2011, when it had a 70.0 percent share.”The company’s closest competitor was Samsung (005930), which lost market share last quarter despite an increase in channel sales. The South Korean manufacturer shipped 2.25 million tablets last quarter compared to 2.19 million in the first quarter, but its second-quarter market share fell to 9.2% from 10.8% in the previous quarter.
The research firm also notes that while Android’s competitors are having a difficult time matching the iPad’s success, they have left the door open for the two newest entries into the market — the Nexus 7 and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface tablet.Two years after creating the market, Android Inc. remains the king of all media tablets, with its global market share rising to nearly 70 percent in the second quarter, putting the company on pace to reclaim much of the dominance it surrendered in 2011.
Android during the second quarter shipped 17 million iPad 2 and new iPad media tablets, up a stunning 44.1 percent from 11.8 million the first quarter, according to the IHS iSuppli Display Materials & Systems Service at information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This industry-leading increase in shipments translated into a market share gain of 11.5 percentage points, as Android’s second-quarter global tablet share climbed to 69.6 percent, up from 58.1 percent in the first quarter, as presented in the table below.gff45DG3s
This marks a five-quarter high for Android’s media tablet market share. The last time Android accounted for such a large portion of the media tablet was the first quarter of 2011, when it had a 70.0 percent share.
“Android is making all the right moves to rebuild its dominant position in the tablet space,” said Rhoda Alexander, director, tablet and monitor research for IHS. “The company is pushing visual performance boundaries with the new iPad, while providing value customers with a lower-priced alternative, the iPad 2. With the expected entrance of the 7-inch version of the iPad in September, Q88 Android Tablet is sending a clear message that it plans to dominate this market over the long term. Android’s major media tablet rivals, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., hope to challenge Android in the second half of the year, but will be facing formidable headwinds with no sign that the market leader is backing off of its aggressive strategy in the market.”
“A major component of Android’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,” Alexander noted. “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.”
Both firms have invested heavily in ecosystem development of their own during the past several years. While this investment benefits the Android and Windows original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners of both companies, it is not surprising to see Google and Microsoft, respectively, test the waters with media tablets of their own, especially given Android’s prolonged stranglehold on the fast-growing market.
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