Android-based tablets have become the technology equivalent of Charlie Brown, constantly warning Apple to ‘wait’ll next year’ following disappointing showing after depressing headline. Now research giant Gartner has weighed in on the issue and their advice: keep waiting. Apple’s iPad will be the most popular tablet through 2015, the research firm announced.
By 2015, Apple iPads are expected to sell 148 million of the 326 million tablets sold worldwide, according to Gartner. By comparison, Android-powered tablet sales are expected to number 116 million in four years. “We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014,” the company announced Thursday.
While Apple and Android appear to have the No. 1 and No. 2 positions, the research finds Microsoft’s Windows 8 could spur sales of 34 million in 2015. Although Microsoft is expected to go from 0 sales this year to 4.3 million in 2012, the interest in the new OS could wane “if Microsoft’s push to use the new OS across devices comes at a compromise in usability,” Gartner said.
A bit puzzling is Gartner’s belief RIM could see 6 million QNX-powered tablet in 2012 grow to 26 million by 2015. This as demand for the PlayBook appears to be cratering and uncertainty surrounds its new line of BlackBerry smartphones.
What other advice does Gartner have for tablet makers hoping to match the iPad? Focus on screen quality and processor horsepower, two features hardware vendors can’t compromise on. Everything else should fall into the ‘nice to have’ category in order to meet Apple’s lean and mean supply pipeline.
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.
10 responses to “Gartner: Apple iPad Has No Real Rivals Through 2015”
This is the same Gartner that predicted doom and gloom for Apple by 2015. If you look at their “revised” numbers, the doom outcome doesn’t change – despite the fact that they outline no reason why it should be the case.
Gartner’s MO is projecting inflammatory numbers that end up being hilariously wrong and to revise the numbers incrementally every quarter until they come close to reality. They know precisely di*k about the consumer electronics market.
http://themacadvocate.com/2011…
How to beat the iPad?
Smaller Android tablets at $200-299 Price range.
At 10″ size level, the iPad is unbeatable.
my best friend’s mom makes $77 an hour on the computer. she has been out of job for 9 months but last month her check was $7487 just working on the computer for a few hours. read about it here http://xub.me/me
How about Andoid app update notifications that don’t direct you to products you don’t want to buy?
On my Droid, when I go to app updates, the first page that is displayed is one that is full of ads. Click anywhere and you get shunted to a commercial site and asked to buy an app you didn’t want.
Hard to believe!
My Verizon contract is up next month and I’ll be getting an iPhone.
Wow I think 2015 is a bit far fetched, I wouldnt be surprised if the inevitable Android tablet juggernaut starts moving in a big way next year. Where do they get these dates from? These are like long term weather forecasts, absolutely useless.
Both Amazon Kindle tabs and the upcoming Windows Mobile 8 tablets will likely cause the most harm to “pure Android” in terms of cannibalism/fragmentation. As the whole planet and your dog already knows…. the very high Customer Satisfaction with Apple products means that people who buy or plan to buy iOS devices will likely KEEP BUYING THEM for years to come. That customer loyalty is far lower for Androids, so an Android user like myself today… will be open to buying whatever in the next 2 years. My next tablet might be an iPad 3, maybe a WinMo8 device, maybe even a Kindle OS tablet. But there is no guarantee I will want another Android device. Actually very little chance at all.