Gartner predicts 118.9 million tablets will be sold this year, a significant 98% increase on the 60 million units sold in 2011.
According to Gartner, Apple will maintain its dominance in the tablet space over the coming years. “Despite the arrival of Microsoft-based devices to this market, and the expected international rollout of the Kindle Fire, Apple will continue to be the market leader through the forecast period,” says Gartner.
While the iPad will continue to dominate the market, its competitors are expected to begin closing the gap in market share. Apple is expected to account for 61.4% of tablet sales this year, while that figure is expected to drop to 45% by 2016.
By comparison, Android is expected to grow to 37% in the same period (Android is expected to take 32% in 2012), with Windows accounting for 12% by 2016. According to Gartner, the core issue with Android tablets has been the lack of dedicated applications that leverage the capabilities of tablets.
The IDC previously predicted that Android will overtake Apple in market share as soon as 2015, as a result of its lower-cost offerings. IDC did, however, predict Apple would remain the market leader in revenue through 2016.
iPad benchmark
Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi says, despite multiple manufacturers throwing themselves into the tablet market, there has been little success outside of Apple and its iPad.
"As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world,” says Milanesi.
Milanesi says the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat, and it appears as if competitors have waited to see what Apple's new offering would be with notably few tablet announcements so far this year.
“Many vendors will wait for Windows 8 to be ready and will try to enter the market with a dual-platform approach, hoping that the Microsoft brand could help them in both the business and consumer markets,” predicts Milanesi.
Windows factor
Milanesi says: “IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers. This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal."
According to Gartner, enterprise will account for 35% of all tablet sales by 2015. Milanesi says: “When the deployment will come from the IT department we believe that operating systems such as Windows 8 will have an advantage as long as they are not seen as a compromise in usability for the users."
In contrast to the almost 100% growth of the media tablet market, Gartner says PC shipments for the first quarter indicate a 1.9% increase on the same quarter last year. The 87.3 million units shipped did, however, exceed Gartner's earlier projections, which anticipated a 1.2% decline for the first quarter.
Gartner says that, while low consumer PC sales are typical of the first quarter, preliminary numbers show a “worse-than-normal” consumer PC shipment growth. “The weak consumer PC demand is in part because of intensified competition for consumers' budgets. Device vendors that focus on a limited product line will get only a small portion of the consumer wallet,” says Gartner.
HP continues to be the global market leader, with 17.2% of worldwide PC shipments for the first quarter. Lenovo follows with 13.1%, and Dell with 11%.
Share
