iPad share said down to 75%, but Android share misleading
updated 04:15 pm EST, Mon January 31, 2011
Strategy Analytics says iPad down to 75pc in fall
Strategy Analytics on Monday claimed that Android had carved deeply into Apple's market share of the tablet market despite new doubts. Devices like the Galaxy Tab had cut the iPad's share from a near-monopoly 95 percent down to 75.3 percent. Android itself claimed 21.6 percent of the market while the remaining 3.1 percent was split between Windows and every other minor tablet platform.
The US was the dominant environment, Strategy Analytics said. Most of Android's gains came from the sheer worldwide reach of the Galaxy Tab and the marketing campaign thrown behind it.
Google was expected to gain share again in the first half of this year once a wave of devices shown at CES began to ship, like the Motorola Xoom.
The researchers' results were nonetheless followed the same day as media discovered that Samsung had been misrepresenting Galaxy Tab sales by a wide margin. Although most companies often count shipments in their figures, a Samsung executive revealed that many if not most of the Android tablets, likely hundreds of thousands, were sitting on store shelves unsold. Apple assumes that the majority of its shipments sell and only sets a small amount aside for inventory and replacements.
Grizzled Veteran
Joined: Jul 2004
So which is it?
Does Android actually have 21% share or not? If the majority of those "sales" were shipped but not sold on the Android side then these numbers are meaningless and Apple still has a near monopoly.