It was an eventful fourth quarter for tablet manufacturers but only a few would walk away truly victorious. In this case, it would be Samsung and Apple.
From a new report by the IDC, Samsung has had a 263 percent year-on-year sales growth for Android and Windows 8 tablets and their market share grew to 15.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. This is more than double of Q4 2011’s market share of 7.3 percent.
Apple also had a major victory with its iPad range shipping 22.9 million units. The competition however meant that the market share was down from 52 per cent in the same quarter the year before to 44 percent in 2012’s fourth quarter.
Microsoft’s Surface tablet didn’t perform so well however, shiping 900,000 units. IDC’s Ryan Reith stated that “We believe that Microsoft and its partners need to quickly adjust to the market realities of smaller screens and lower prices.
“In the long run, consumers may grow to believe that high-end computing tablets with desktop operating systems are worth a higher premium than other tablets, but until then ASPs on Windows 8 and Windows RT devices need to come down to drive higher volumes.”
Source: GIBiz