Guys! Guess what! This iPad thing really seems to be taking off!
Apple’s iPad 2 continues to dominate the tablet market, shipping 9.3 million units and achieving a 68.3 percent share of the worldwide market in the second quarter, IDC found. That’s up from 65.7 percent in the first quarter.
Up?! Was the iPad-killing switch on these Android tablets left in the “reverse” position when they left the factory? Android tablets actually lost share, “slipping to 26.8 percent of the market from 34.0 percent in the first quarter.” And IDC expects Android’s share to slip even further in the third quarter as the effect of the “Everything must go, including our business model!” HP TouchPad sale takes effect.
The Macalope joked in the lede (yeah, the horny one will drop some journalism lingo on you—BOOM!), but to be frank, he missed it on the iPad. He expected it to do better than the Apple TV, but not as good as the MacBook Air. Oh, well! Punditry is never having to say you’re sorry.
Speaking of punditry, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes thinks of Android on tablets:
if it weren’t for the iPad, people might be willing to put up with the problems.
Would they? The Macalope’s not so sure. Android tablets don’t suck as bad as the Windows tablets that have been on the market for years, but they’re similar in their inability to get down to Apple’s price point and the unwillingness of OEMs to make choices about configuration. The Macalope expects that in an iPad-less world, Android tablets would probably sell better than they’re selling now, but the market wouldn’t be nearly as big as the iPad’s made it. There’s no way Android tablets would be pushing 9.3 million units a quarter.
Of course, you can get pedantic and say that Android tablet OEMs might be able to lower their prices if Apple weren’t being such a big jerk and hogging all the screens and flash memory and aluminum and stuff (the iPad 2 is 10 percent “stuff” by weight). But doesn’t Samsung make some of the iPad components? Couldn’t they just sell them to themselves at cost if Galaxy Tabs were so hot? So what are you complaining about, fictitious Android booster?
Anyway, as you’ve no doubt heard unless you’ve been under a rock (or something rock-like, like Steve Ballmer’s head), Amazon is widely rumored to be entering the fray next quarter. Market share will get interesting when its tablet thingy running Amazoid, or whatever they’re going to call it, hits the streets (hopefully not literally, because that will surely void the warranty).
What is Amazon going to call its fork of the Android operating system, anyway? Not Android, because Google controls that trademark, and you can only use it if you agree to the company’s terms. Maybe Amazon won’t call it anything—it’ll just be known by the device name.
Still, the Macalope wonders if it will get categorized as Android by iPad-hating analysts, in order to pump up Androids numbers and he just answered his own question, didn’t he.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]