Worldwide media tablet shipments rose by 88.9% on a sequential basis and 303.8% year over year in the second calendar quarter of 2011 (2Q11) to 13.6 million units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker. Based on this strong performance in the second quarter, and an improved outlook for the second half of the year, IDC raised its shipment forecast for 2011 to 62.5 million units, up from a previous projection of 53.5 million units.
Worldwide media tablet shipments in the second quarter were driven by continued robust demand for Apple’s iPad 2, which saw shipments reach 9.3 million units, representing a 68.3% share of the worldwide market (up from 65.7% the previous quarter). Research in Motion entered the media tablet market in 2Q11 with its PlayBook product, grabbing a 4.9% share of the market. Apple’s strength and RIM’s entrance meant bad news for Android-based media tablets, which saw its collective share slip to 26.8%, down from 34.0% the previous quarter.
Looking forward to the second half of 2011, IDC expects Android to cede additional market share in 3Q11 (dropping to 23%) before it starts growing its share again in 4Q11 (increasing to 25.9%) and beyond. In addition to continued demand for Apple iPads, IDC expects many consumers who were on the fence about buying a media tablet to scoop up $99 TouchPads as a result of HP’s decision to end production of its tablet product. IDC expects close to a million TouchPads to ship into the channel before the end of the year. As a result, WebOS’s worldwide market share is forecast to reach 4.7% in 3Q11. However, with no clear plan to license or sell the OS to other vendors, IDC expects the WebOS market share to shrink back to zero by 1Q12.
“Media tablet shipments grew at a solid pace in the second quarter, led by continued strong demand for Apple products,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices, in the press release. “We expect shipment totals to continue to grow in the third and fourth quarter, as additional vendors introduce more price-competitive Android products into the market and Apple works to maintain its dominance in the category.”
“Apple’s iOS share will continue to lead by more than 40 percentage points over Google’s Android for the remainder of the year, but we expect Apple’s share to fall closer to 50% by the end of the forecast period as manufacturers bring new tablets to market,” said Jennifer Song, research analyst, Worldwide Trackers, in the press release.
Turning to eReaders, the second quarter experienced a seasonal dip, down 9% sequentially to 5.4 million units, while year-over-year growth was 167%. Amazon led the market with a 51.7% share, followed by Barnes & Noble with 21.2%. With product refreshes and following strong 2Q11 sales, IDC expects eReader shipments to grow significantly through the holiday season, reaching a total of 27.0 million units for the year, up from a previous projection of 16.2 million units.
“We expect major vendors to offer their current-generation black-and-white eReaders for less than $100 by the holidays,” Mainelli said. “We’re also expecting Amazon’s much-rumored, color LCD-based device to ship later this year. Because we expect it to run a customized version of Android that ties its use to Amazon’s content services, we expect the device to more closely resemble Barnes & Noble’s Color Nook than Apple’s iPad 2. As a result, our current plan is to count it as an eReader, and that will also help drive shipment numbers.”
“eReaders are also gaining traction with a combination of increasing function and affordability, as well as greater device and content availability,” added Ms Song. “The strong first half performance and an improved view of eReader positioning helped boost our outlook for shipment volume.”
Source: International Data Corporation
Absurd! How can they get away with just making up numbers like this? Obviously they are using manufacturer “shipped” numbers, not sold to consumers. And lumping ereaders like kindle in with iPad? Ridiculous.
They do not merge tablets’ and readers’ sales. However, non-iPad tablet sales do seem to be significantly overstated.
4.3 million non-iPad tablets sold?
SGT 10.1 sold 1 million in two month, with half of it already in Q3, Xoom 400 000, others no bigger. RIM sold about half of million.
If you add all of these sales, you can barely get more than 2 million of non-iPad sales, not 4.3 million.
Actually, Samsung only SHIPPED 1 million Galaxy Tabs; it’s been reported that they only actually SOLD about 20,000 – 30,000 of those.
30 thousand information was about last years 7″ SGT. This new SGT 10.1 is more popular indeed. Though not in the quantity to justify this 4.3 million non-iPad tables sales for Q2.
“Shipped”, I agree GeeOne, anyone can SHIP tablets. The trick is to get someone to give up their hard earned money to buy an inferior product when they should have and really wanted an iPad.
And these numbers made know sense until I realized that they were counting eReaders as iPadKillers. If you put a touch screen on it we will count it. Clueless idiots.
That was the Acer or Lenovo Europe guy who rumored that Samsung sold only 20k in 2010. Repeat, 2010. Presumably, they’ve sold more since then.
Seriously? The RIM Playbook got 4.9% of the market? I call BS! That means for every 100 tablets I see, 5 of them are Playbooks? I have now seen hundreds of tablets and not one single Playbook in the wild.
These are “shipped” numbers not sold. These numbers aren’t indicative of devices that actually end up in consumers’ hands.
You guys and gals all beat me to the punch. I agree with all of the above. Maybe shipping but real sold share exceeds 95% no doubt.
bogus.
I’m guessing, all the comments above are from the US.
While iPad is the undisputed king out there, you’d be very, very surprised at the sheer number of sub- $200 Android tablets made by cheap name and no-name makers, such as Viewsonic, Archos, Lenovo, Asus, Medion, Wayteq, Huawei… Many of them have the old-fashioned (ultra-crappy) resistive screen (requiring a stylus for a reasonably consistent performance), and none of them can ever be compared to the iPad, however, based on all functional criteria, they are indeed tablets (touch-screen, fully-googlified Android OS, SD card slot, two cameras, USB, etc).
These cheapo devices are quite popular in the developing world that cannot afford to spend an entire monthly salary on an iPad, and seem to be happy enough with the crap devices. Same difference as between an iPhone ($650 and up) and an LG Optimus ($150).
get real. bogus.
Well I’ve recently been to three countries in South and central Africa and can attest Predrag’s comment. iPads are ‘very’ expensive there and I saw mostly noname Chinese slabs plus a number of Acer tablets….and only one iPad in a bank.
Amongst fellow tourists, every one was the iPad. We changed planes at Rome on the way back and I’ll swear half the plane full had one.
Two million of these no-name junk tablets?
Not sure if these that popular.
In Germany, which I believe is currently the second or third largest tablet market in the world, the iPad is the undisputed king of the market with around 90% market share.
Anecdotally, I’ve yet to see a Xoom in the wild, and have maybe seen a dozen or so Galaxy Tabs (which will soon dwindle to zero now that Apple has won their court case and effectively gotten Samsung Tabs banned in Germany). Everywhere I go I see iPads here.
Not likely… people who can’t afford to pay more than $200 for a tablet, will just stick to using their smartphones rather than ponying up more money for pretty much the same functionality as these so called tablets.
There are also many countries in the world where you can’t get an iPad, but you can get a cheapo Android knock-off (even worse than a Samsung, etc.).
True, but do you really think IDC is measuring those countries?
With million TouchPads in the market it really might help to licence or sell the WebOS to some Chinese company that can actually make money out of it. Or not.
WebOS should have been removed from these stats. It’s an aberration that 1 million TouchPads were sold. Obviously, no manufacturer cannot continue selling for $99 a product that costs them 3x that to produce. People purchased these precisely because HP claimed that they would not be making any more of them.
My own prediction is that Android based tablets will increase to 15% in 2013, then decrease to 12% in 2014, then increase to 17% in 2015, then decrease to only 8% in 2016. Of course I could be mistaken about 2016, might be less. Now that is some analyzing right there folks.
No Hugh – you’re not doing it right. Notice this bit: “IDC expects Android to cede additional market share in 3Q11 (dropping to 23%) before it starts growing its share again in 4Q11 (increasing to 25.9%) and beyond.” If you want to get taken seriously as an analyst, you’re supposed to give at least some of your predictions to one decimal place. It adds a certain (what shall we call it…) precision, you see.
to quote sir victor reeves, “80% of statistics are made up”
analysts numbers are a joke as long as companies refuse to release actual sales numbers (with return rates etc)
You only know it’s a disaster when they go under like Kin, Palm and HP WebOS….
I thought Gruber showed from a recent Android blogpost where the author broke down the percentage of Androids by OS version, including Honeycomb, he calculated that the iPad had 95% of the market.
The big difference, and it’s been said overhand over again, Apple actually states SALES totals while every single other company states SHIPPED numbers… Huge difference..
Actually Apple reports shipments, but then gives channel inventory estimates in the conference call, so that you can calculate sell-thru.