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Gartner today said that they expect Android to become a viable competitor to the Apple iPad in the tablet space by 2015. In that year, Android is expected to grab nearly 40% of the market. To put it into perspective, Android supposedly accounts for 20% of all tablets in the market today.
They also released some sales figures for tablets over all. 70 million units from Apple, Samsung, RIM, Motorola, LG and more will be sold this year, while 2012 will see a jump to 108 million. Just 17.6 million tablets were sold last year.
It’s a trend that should be quite familiar to us all: Apple creates a new market and everyone follows. As we’ve seen with smartphones, though, Android tablets definitely have the potential to catch up and eventually surpass the iPad. We won’t jump that far ahead, though, because we need a majority of these devices to actually be released. Let’s get on it, OEMs! [via Reuters]
4 years from now? I would never even attempt to make a tech prediction more than 24 months out.
Gartner can’t even get it right for 12 months ahead. Remember when they said Android will have 30% by the end of 2014? And it happened at the end of 2010? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Android will get 39% either by the end of the year or early next year, in quarterly sales.
And wow, are they saying that if Android could get 15% of the market in 2010, with only Samsung and a few noname manufacturers making tablets with an OS not customized for tablets, it can’t get more than an extra 5% in 2011 when all the other big manufacturers are joining like Motorola, LG, HTC, Sony, and even more noname manufacturers, plus while using Honeycomb? Either Gartner’s prediction methods are a joke, or they are very biased. I don’t know which is worse.
I doubt they counted the g tablets woot and tigersdirect just sold. I’m guess 15000 units?
The transformer is probably capable of selling a good 10000 units this year. Android will probably end with 40000 units this year.
So my prediction
Android tabs to have 40% of the market in 2011 (not that great, considering half of them are low quality tabs) 50% in 2012 and 50% in 2013, 2014 and 2015. It will struggle to get to 60% in the next few years as microsoft will make a comeback;)
That’s in thousands, so 13M this year, not 13k
“Android supposedly accounts for 20% of all tablets in the market today.”
No, the data doesn’t mean that. That’s the estimate for the entire of 2011.
So by 2015, the mighty Windows 8 will be bundled in with “other” accounting for 2 tenths of one per cent of the market.
Perhaps that will be the signal that the Microsoft board is waiting for, the one that means, “Monkey Boy must go.”
bs prediction
I’m with Lucian, Android will eat away at the ipad alot faster than these clowns seem to think it will.
I agree. The flaw in their thinking is that Android and iPad are an apples to apples comparison. Android is a platform and iPad is a single product.
However, I also believe that tablets are more of a novelty right now and will not be as big as a lot seem to think they will be. SmartPhones will continue to be where the action is and Android already owns that market.
I’m waiting for a BOGO deal with Xoom. Moto is greedy, they forgot that it is the BOGO deals that got Android so far ahead. Until then I won’t pay full price on these tablets.
Do they not know about Win8?