iPad loses battle against Android tablets

Too late and too expensive

According to IDC no less than 190 million
tablets will be sold over the course of this year, a lot more than the
previous estimate of the agency: a while back IDC predicted the sale of 172.4
million units. The explanation for this is the current inflow of smaller and
cheaper tablets: “One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below eight inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets
to continue growing in 2013 and beyond.”

Smaller and cheaper are two things you would not
associate with Apple. There is of course the iPad Mini, but that model came too late
to save the show (there have been 7″ Android tablets since 2010). The price of
at least 335 euro is another downside of the iPad’s little brother, with
Android tablets available for half that price.

No room for Windows

IDC is expecting that the operating system of
Google will peak at a market share of 48.8% this year (earlier IDC predicted a
number of 41.5%). Apple iOS would fall to 46%. In 2012 that operating system still
controlled 51% of the market.

When two dogs fight over one bone, usually the
third dog, in this story Windows, is the winner, but not this time. IDC sees Windows RT getting a market share of a measly 1.9%. IDC however sees some
growth for tablets with complete Windows versions: by 2017 they should
entail about 7.4% of the market. Question remains if this is something for
Microsoft to be proud of…