man-bear-pig on 23 September 2012
Scoobes said:
smbu2000 said:
Scoobes said:
ebw said:
The thing is, marketshare is reversed when you eliminate the one big factor that skews the numbers toward Android. The problem is that carriers have a huge influence on people's choice of phones. A large bulk of sales come from customers who come in to the phone store and just buy whatever is pushed onto them. Anyone who believes that 60% of the world consciously picked Android is kidding themselves: compare the sales figures with actual usage statistics which show iOS well ahead of Android. The simplest explanation is that Android is becoming the new "dirt cheap" and most owners use them as dumbphones, never even bothering to learn how to open web pages.
Incidentally, I suspect carrier intervention is also the reason why Windows Phone struggles to get any traction even with its stellar reviews.
Let's now take a look at a market that is (largely) free from this bias: tablets. Tablets do not come attached with lucrative locked-in contracts, so the wireless carriers are not a significant source of tablet sales. How do Android and iOS compare there? The best-selling Android tablet is Kindle Fire, running an hugely outdated version of the OS. Unfortunately Amazon is closed and refuses to release any sales data, but estimates suggest the iPad is holding a >60% share all by itself against a tide of inferior Android tablets.
(Oh, and anyone who really thinks proprietary connectors and closed systems are horrible, isn't much of a console gamer. What percentage of this site does that describe?)
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You analysis is somewhat skewed considering the same situation was present when Android first came out on smartphones. It's only been around 2 years since Android tablets became available. In the same time period, the market share of smartphones (iOS vs Android) was similar to what we're seeing with tablets and it's only recently that tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 have really started to push the Android tablet market. It may take longer on tablets for the reason you mention above, but it seems likely that Android tablets will overtake iPad in terms of market share.
The one big difference is that this time Microsoft are going to throw a spanner into the works by releasing Surface but I think this is more likely to compete with iPads (higher end market & business users) then the best selling Android tablets (smaller, cheaper, 7" tablets).
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Didn't you watch the iPhone 5 keynote? At the beginning Tim Cook talked about the iPad market share. Between April-June 2011 the iPad had 62% of the WW marketshare. Between April-June 2012 the iPad had 68% of the total WW marketshare, so it is increasing again compared to prior years.
Even with that 91% of all tablet web traffic comes from iPads. Another interesting statistic, 94% of Fortune 500 companies are deploying iPads into their business.
If you don't want to see the whole keynote you can see the relevant pictures from it here: (didn't really look at the "article" just the pics)
http://totalipad.com/the-fascinating-ipad/
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I saw the keynote. That's within the typical peaks and troughs especially considering the new iPad released in March. The release of a new Apple product always results in a slight increase in market share for Apple (that's true of the iPhone too). That also doesn't take into account the new Nexus 7 (estimated to sell 6-8 million by years end), the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and the new Kindle Fire range Amazon announced. The increase in Android market share is typically a gradual one and the competition is just starting to get going.
The tablet market is really hotting up. Smaller Android tablets are starting to make inroads in the 7" budget sector and the larger Kindle Fire HD has potential in the US market. Then there's Microsoft who could make inroads in the business sector. Then there are the rumours of Apple releasing an iPad mini in the next month or so.
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Isn't an iPod touch an iPad mini?
