Apple Still Leader In Tablet Market, But Samsung Closing In

Apple’s share of the tablet market declined again in the fourth quarter of 2012 but the company still has twice the share of its nearest rival, Samsung.

Research firm IDC and their latest numbers are showing that current market leader Apple with their iPad are losing tablet market share. Apple’s tablet market share dropped from 51.7% to 43.6%, where in the last three months of 2012 Samsung jumped up to 15.1%.

When taking in consideration the year-over-year numbers, Samsung’s growth has been huge where a year ago they sold just 2.2 million tablets, and twelve months later they’re seeing sales of 7.9 million units.

IDC said the strongest growth came from Android, including tablets made by South Korea’s Samsung and Taiwan’s Asus, which makes a Google-branded Nexus tablet.

The survey found that Microsoft, which launched its new Surface tablet in the quarter, failed to break into the top five sellers and shipped a modest 900,000 of the devices in the quarter.

IDC said Amazon, which does not provide its own sales data, delivered some six million tablets in the quarter to retain its spot as the number three vendor.

That represented 26.8 percent growth, giving Amazon a market share of 11.5 percent, IDC said.

Fourth place belonged to Asus, which sold 3.1 million tablets, year-on-year growth of more than 400 percent. That gave the Taiwan-based firm a 5.8 percent market share. Barnes & Noble sold one million of its Nook tablets and accounted to 1.9 percent of the market, the survey found.

 The tablet market is expected to get much more serious this year, with multiple Nexus tablets from Google, as well as Microsoft’s upcoming Surface Pro slate.