“Given the position that Apple Inc. has, Amazon.com Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. are likely to be playing just against each other for second place as long as Apple rules the game,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
“Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook claimed as much at a company event on Oct. 4, when he said the iPad was the ‘undisputed’ king of tablets, and cited industry research that said 75% of all tablets sold were iPads,” Crum reports. “According to Michael Walkley of Canaccord Genuity, the future is likely to remain Apple’s to own. ‘New entrants such as Amazon could disrupt the [market] dynamics into holiday sales,’ he said, but added that the 7-inch screen models like those from Amazon are more of a threat to other Android-based tablet makers than the iPad.”
Crum reports, “Walkley estimates that Amazon will claim about 3% of the tablet market in 2011, with sales of about 2 million devices. B&N’s Nook Tablet hadn’t been announced when Walkley made his forecasts on Nov. 3.”
Read more in the full article here.
If find it interesting that iPad is 75% of tablet sales and about 97% of tablet web traffic (reported earlier). This would seem to suggest that other tablets aren’t being used as much online as the iPad, which would account for the non iPad “little used” tablets I see for sale second hand.
… for that usage! She spends several hours surfing while “watching TV” most nights. I can tell … she asks “what was that?” all the time.
It’s interesting that the iPad has such a large part of the market while the rest are grouped as “also-rans”. In most markets, you have a “Top 5” – or Ten, or whatever. Macs, for example, recently broke into the “Top 5 in the US” but remain (?) in the “others” for the Worldwide list. But with OSs, MP3 players and Tablets, there’s “the leader”, then there’s everyone else. With smart phones, the battle is, do we list Android as the top model? Or the iPhone, followed by the various Android models? And, if the former, how do we list the profits?
B&N and Amazon are going to completely eviscerate the Android tablet market because the Android OEMs have no storefront to subsidize their tablets. No one is going to buy a $500 Samsung Galaxy now. They will either buy the cheapo Amazon/BN options or they will buy an iPad.
At the same time, they are taking the Android eco-system BACKWARDS (ancient OS, very limited hardware) while making Google irrelevant.
Google created (or ripped off!) something of value, but failed to lock down strategic control of their product. Reminds me a bit how IBM gave away the keys to the kingdom with MS.
It’s almost unthinkable that the Nook Tablet will be using Gingerbread when Ice Cream Sandwich is imminent. The Nook Tablet will be running a practically ancient smartphone OS as far as the Droidtards are concerned. The Kindle Fire has its own forked version of Gingerbread. This sort of deliberate fragmentation makes no sense at all. Android is definitely a weird platform and I don’t know why Wall Street keeps betting on it to win out over iOS.
If Amazon and B&N dominate the “also-ran” category, that’s going to create a hard situation for Android fans who want a tablet, because these tablets will just be using Android as a means to an end. This will leave very little left of the market for advanced Android tablets.
Expect a lot of woe in Slashdot-land.
——RM
What tablet market? In Australia we have iPad and that’s it. Oh wait, you’re talking about the crummy plastic things on the other side of the store.
The Nook and Kindle devices are not tablets, they are more functional e-readers. Their makers are not going to think in terms of how they must beat the iPad, they’re going to think of how they can use their own platforms to sell more content to their customers.
If it’s not all about selling the content, why is there a Kindle Reader for iPad? The analysts don’t seem to have worked out what Amazon and B&N are actually aiming for.
I’d like –
1
I’d like a narrower bezel-surround allowing the present size screen in a smaller form factor.
Let’s call it the iPad Nano.
It’s a funny thing about Android device manufacturers. They like big smartphones, yet they like tiny tablets.