Yet another report indicates Apple’s iPad beats the pack of Android tablets until at least 2015. More polished and less expensive alternatives could cut Cupertino’s comfortable marketshare by more than a third, new research finds.
“Apple’s edge is likely to wane as the quality of the competing products and application environments improves,” says David McQueen, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. Apple’s current 75 percent of the tablet marketshare is expected to shrink to just 39 percent as Android-based tablets improve. Indeed, Apple will sell 90 million units versus Android’s 87 million in 2015, according to the researcher.
McQueen said low-cost tablets, such as those rumored from Kindle-maker Amazon, coupled with an improved OS should increase consumer appeal. Other devices based on various operating systems, including Windows, RIM’s QnX, and HP’s WebOS, will also shrink Apple’s current tablet lead, contends McQueen.
The numbers mirror earlier Gartner projections that Apple’s current tablet marketshare will fall below 50 percent by 2015.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
