TabletMarket
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IDC: Apple's still king of the tablet hill with 68 percent of the market
IDC's cabal of statisticians, nerds and people who just love spreadsheets have handed down their latest document about the state of the tablet market. Of the 25 million slates shipped in the second quarter, 17 million of them were iPads -- giving Apple 68.2 percent of the market. Samsung came second with 2.4 million devices and Amazon third, although since the Kindle Fire maker doesn't reveal numbers, there's probably some guesswork involved there. Rounding out the top five are ASUS and Acer, although the former should expect to move up a place (or two), depending on the success of the Nexus 7 when Q3's results are released in a few months time.
LG backing off tablets for now, would rather circle smartphone wagons
LG has decided not to chip in any more tablets to the huge pile that's already out there, and will focus on smartphones instead. It hasn't exactly stormed the market anyway -- with recent tab offerings like the Optimus Pad LTE falling flat -- and has said that the move would free it up to improve its No. 4 spot on the world's cellphone charts. It insists the decision has nothing to do with Microsoft's recent Surface announcement, and says it doesn't compete in that particular sphere anyway. So that's that.
IDC: Android tablets will overtake iPad by 2015, despite everything
They're not center-stage right now, but Android tablets are still predicted to overtake the iPad within the next three years, according to IDC. The forecasters noted that Apple's worldwide share of the tablet market is shrinking with each new lower-priced Android competitor. Even as iPad sales continued to grow in 2011, surging 50 percent between Q3 and Q4, its market share fell during the same period, from 61.5 to 54.7 percent. That gives the iOS slate a weaker lead going into 2012 than suggested by earlier figures. Of course, the iPad remains an individual starlet in front of a troupe of Google dancers, so Apple's position as the upper-most vendor isn't under threat. In fact, IDC predicts it will remain the market leader in terms of revenue beyond 2016, which ought to put some fire in Amazon's belly.
