Latest IDC tablet shipment reports says Android down, iOS up
Recently some interesting news was revealed by IDC regarding the tablet shipment for the second quarter of 2011 along with the prediction for the rest of the year. The tablet shipments are now expected to reach 62.5 million in 2011, which is up from what was expected to be around 53.5 million units.
Apple’s iPad 2 sales continue to fluctuate with Android and RIM interfering in the market, but still according to IDC its sales were high worldwide and the tablet shipped around 9.3 million units during Q2 representing a 68.3 percent share in the worldwide tablet market. Well this was about 2.6 million higher from the first quarter. Even RIM’s PlayBook reached a 4.9percent share which is surprising for a new entry in the market. While the Android tablets did not report such a turnover but were reduced in their number of shares from 34 percent to 26.8 percent.
According to a prediction the Android shares is expected to fall further to 23 percent in Q3 before it jumps back to 25.9 percent in the last quarter. Because of the reduction of the price of $99 the HP TouchPad tablets will see an increase in its share up to 4.7 percent in this quarter while because of terminating the production of the model its share will disappear by the Q1 of 2012.
Though looking at the high expectation on Amazon’s tablet, Android tablet shares will not be benefitted much as IDC mentioned that the rumoured slate is actually more like an e-reader so won’t stand in the competition with the tablets.
The e-readers shipment has shown a drop in the Q2 by 9 percent to 5.4 million units but it is expected to again increase and will reach to a total of 27 million of units sold by the end of 2011.