Apple’s iPad will continue to dominate the “media tablet” market for years to come, research firm Gartner said on Monday. While Google’s Android platform is expected to gain market share rapidly as iOS’ share declines over the next five years, Gartner still sees iOS as owning the largest share in the tablet market five years from now. According to the firm’s latest figures, Apple’s iPad tablets accounted for 83.9% of the market in 2010 while Android tablets — namely Samsung’s Galaxy Tab — held a 14.2% share. In 2011, Gartner expects the iPad’s market share to slip to 68.7% while Android’s share climbs to 19.9%, and then in 2015, Android will rise to account for 38.6% of the market. At that time, Gartner expects Apple’s iPad to account for 47.1% of the 294 million tablets sold, meaning Gartner expects Apple so sell nearly 140 million iPads in 2015. A few other items of note according to the firm’s forecast: RIM’s QNX-based tablets will make up 10% of media tablets sold in 2015, HP’s webOS will only have a 3% market share in 2015, and the figures in this report do not include sales of Windows-based tablets as they do not fit Gartner’s criteria for “media tablets,” which run a lightweight OS. Hit the break for Gartner’s full press release.
Gartner Says Apple iOS to Dominate the Media Tablet Market Through 2015, Owning More Than Half of It for the Next Three Years
Egham, UK, April 11, 2011—
Despite mounting competition from other operating systems (OSs), Apple’s iOS will continue to own the majority of the worldwide media tablet through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Due to the success of Apple’s iPad, iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet OSs in 2011, and represent 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.
Gartner analysts said Apple iPad did to the tablet PC market what the iPhone did to the smartphone market: re-invented it. A media tablet is not just a different form factor to perform the same tasks that can be done on a PC. Tablets deliver a richer experience around content consumption, thanks to the ecosystem they support. The richer the ecosystem, the stronger the pull for consumers.
“Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.”
Google’s Android OS is forecast to increase its worldwide share of the media tablet market from 20 percent in 2011 to 39 percent in 2015 (see Table 1). Analysts said Google’s decision not to open up the Honeycomb, its first OS version dedicated to tablets, to third parties will prevent fragmentation, but it will also slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share.
“Volume will be driven by support from many players, the ecosystem of applications for tablets getting more competitive and some platform flexibility allowing lower price points,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. “The new licensing model Google has introduced with Honeycomb enables Google to drive more control, allowing only optimal tablet implementations that don’t compromise quality of experience. This might mean that prices will drop at a slower pace than what we have seen in the smartphone market.”
Table 1
Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)
OS 2010 2011 2012 2015 iOS 14,766 47,964 68,670 138,497 Market Share (%) 83.9 68.7 63.5 47.1 Android 2,502 13,898 26,382 113,457 Market Share (%) 14.2 19.9 24.4 38.6 MeeGo 107 788 1,271 3,057 Market Share (%) 0.6 1.1 1.2 1.0 WebOS 0 2,796 4,245 8,886 Market Share (%) 0.0 4.0 3.9 3.0 QNX 0 3,901 7,134 29,496 Market Share (%) 0.0 5.6 6.6 10.0 Other Operating Systems 234 432 510 700 Market Share (%) 1.3 0.6 0.5 0.2 Total Market 17,610 69,780 108,211 294,093 Source: Gartner (April 2011)
With the migration of Blackberry devices to QNX – the OS used on the Blackberry PlayBook – in 2012, RIM will be able to offer users a consistent experience across its whole product portfolio and create a single developer community. While QNX is a strong platform that delivers on performance, graphics and multitasking features,Gartner analysts said success in the media tablet market will be driven by richness of ecosystem.
“It will take time and significant effort for RIM to attract developers and deliver a compelling ecosystem of applications and services around QNX to position it as a viable alternative to Apple or Android. This will limit RIM’s market share growth over the forecast period,” Ms. Milanesi said. “It will be mainly organizations that will be interested in RIM’s tablets because they either already have RIM’s infrastructure deployed or have stringent security requirements.”
Gartner analysts said platforms such as MeeGo and WebOS, which currently have a weak presence in the smartphone market, will have a limited appeal unless they can grow that business.
“Smartphone users will want to buy a tablet that runs the same operating system as their smartphone. This is so that they can share applications across devices as well as for the sense of familiarity the user interfaces will bring,” Ms. Milanesi said. “Vendors developing on Android should be prepared to see more cross brand ownership as some users might put OS over brand when it comes to the purchasing decision. Improvements on usability and brand recognition are the strongest differentiators they can focus on.”
A media tablet is a device based on a touchscreen display (typically with a multitouch interface) whose primary focus is the consumption of media. The devices have screens with a diagonal dimension that is over 5 inches and may include screens that are as large as is practical for handheld use, roughly up to 15 inches. The media tablet runs a lightweight OS such as Android and iOS that is more limited than, or a subset of, the traditional fully featured OS such as Windows.
