Android Gains on iPad in Global Tablet Market Share
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012Global shipments of tablets reached 26.8 million units in the final three months of 2011 — a 150 percent year-over-year surge from the year-earlier period, according to Strategy Analytics. Though Apple’s iPad continued to remain on top with a 58 percent market share, unit shipments of Android tablets reached record levels.
During the fourth quarter, Apple shipped 15.4 million iPads. However, Android-based devices captured a 39 percent share — up from 29 percent in the same quarter of 2010, said Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston.
“Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes,” Mawston said. “Global Android tablet shipments tripled annually to 10.5 million units.”
According to mobile app analytics firm Flurry, however, Android’s huge leap in tablet market share is due in major part to Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle Fire last October. Claiming to track more than 20 percent of all Internet consumer sessions on over 90 percent of all Android devices each day, Flurry believes the Kindle Fire has already reached parity with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab offerings.
Kindle Fire Usage Flares
Flurry defines an Android tablet session as the launch and subsequent exit, or pause for more than 10 seconds, of an app. Last November, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab models accounted for 63 percent of all Android tablet app sessions monitored by the firm. By the end of January, however, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab platforms were effectively tied with 35.7 percent and 35.6 percent session shares, respectively.
“In January, after the holiday boom in devices and in apps, we see that strong adoption of Kindle Fire, combined with significant downloads driven from the Amazon App Store, resulted in a massive surge in session usage that just edges out the Galaxy Tab,” said Flurry…
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