Apple posts huge sales numbers for iPad, but Android tablets aren’t failing in the market
Posted on 26. Jan, 2012 by Paul in Tablets
The Apple iPad 2 is the most current tablet from Apple, it was released in February of 2011.
For the first quarter of 2012 Apple has reported their highest earnings and profits yet. Apple reported on Tuesday that they had earned $46.33 billion in revenue with $13.06 billion of that being profit.
In their break down of just where all that revenue came from Apple showed they make most of their money on hardware sales, the iPhone being the biggest chunk and the iPad, surprisingly, selling more than double the units than Mac computers (laptops and desktops). The iPad in the first quarter saw 117% increase in sales compared to last year, Apple managed to sell 15.43 million iPads in their first 2012 quarter.
Apple is doing really well as a tech company, but as a tablet market participant they’re putting up unheard of numbers for any single manufacturer. It was only recently that we heard reports that a non-Apple tablet maker, Amazon.com Inc. in this case, had sold as many as 5.5 million tablets in one-quarter –however it should be noted Amazon hasn’t confirmed anything more than the Kindle Fire is the best-selling electronic in their very popular online store Amazon.com.
With a big 15.43 million units sold before we’ve even seen the Apple iPad 3 (or whatever Apple plans to name their next iPad) Apple seems poised to keep their leading position in the tablet market, right? Well that jury is still out on that because if you’re looking a total market share for platforms Apple’s iOS is getting some chase from Google’s Android platform, a recent market study by Strategy Analytics claims that in the fourth quarter of 2011 Android shot up to 39.1% marketshare while Apple fell to 57.6%.
If you’re a fan of history you should already have seen the rise of Android as a platform for tablets coming from a mile away. Android offers many OEMs the opportunity to have their own tablets without the need to build their own operating system from scratch, Google gives everyone access to some version of Android without charge (they only charge money for their own Google certified Apps). Apple on the other-hand keeps their iOS behind lock and key thus restricting any third-party OEMs from using their operating system in their own tablets.
Apple probably isn’t too worried about the rise of Android as a competing platform as long as they keep selling iPads at this current rate every quarter. Apple has never been too concerned about keeping a ton of market share in any one market.
Don’t get me wrong on my views of Apple, they care to a certain degree about where their products are on the leader board but their not going to design their iPad to beat out every single tablet out there at everything from price, performance, looks and of course feel. It’s just that Apple has proven they can stay profitable without having a majority share of the platform market share (see iPhone, it’s being dominated in market share by Android but Apple is still making the most profit in the smartphone business).
The only place that platform market share loss can hurt Apple is in keeping certain mobile applications iPad exclusives. Developers have created a lot of iPad specific applications and games in the few years the iPad has existed, the same cannot be said for other platforms like Google’s Android. However going forward if Android manages to overtake Apple’s iOS in market share for tablets we should see a large number of developers turning their eye to Android for tablet development as well.
Check Out Other Stories
