Samsung Galaxy Tab, HP TouchPad, not being a serious threat individually, have jointly grabbed 20% of Apple’s market share over the past 12 months, according to ABI Research.
According to Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, many manufacturers who have presented their tablets are afraid to oppose Apple and therefore do not stand out from the crowd. Moreover, they often sell devices similar to the iPad at a higher price.
Another 50 companies are going to enter the lucrative tablet market in the near future, increasing the threat to Apple. Most recently, no one took tablets seriously, but by 2015 their sales will exceed the 120 million mark.
ABI claims that the market is still in its infancy. According to Jeff Orr, Android “is trying to make society believe that literally within a few years tablets themselves will become fully functional. It has nothing to do with reality. In order for the market to develop, a positive user experience and feedback are needed.”
Anyway, the number of producers and consumers is growing, and this is a good sign. However, now there are three operating systems for a huge number of devices: it is almost impossible to guess how the market will develop further. Will someone be able to challenge Apple in the tablet market? Most likely, it will be possible to answer this question only if competitors think about standardization.
A source