Worldwide media tablet sales are forecast to total 118.9 million units in 2012

Gartner said that it expects Apple tablets to maintain a more than 45 per cent worldwide share of the booming sector until 2016. Apple’s stranglehold is loosening, however. Gartner said that the iPad accounted for 73.4 per cent of tablet sales in 2011, and 83 per cent in 2010. But Apple will still profit massively, it's expected, as the total market will continue to grow rapidly, it's expected. By the end of 2016, some 665 billion tablets of all flavours will be in use, the analyst house said. The challenge to the iPad from a plethora of hardware running Google Android is expected to be joined later this year by machines running Microsoft's operating system Windows 8, which is designed for both desktop and tablet computers. Gartner however said the late entrant will struggle to make an impact by 2016. Windows tablets will have a no more than 12 per cent share by then, it's estimated. The expected pattern is in contrast to the way Apple's iPhone was overtaken in terms of market share by Google Android smartphones, which were introduced over a year later. Worldwide media tablet sales are forecast to total 118.9 million units in 2012, up 98 per cent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units, the firm said. "Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat.

"It appears that this year competitors have waited to see what Apple would bring out — because there were very few announcements of new media tablets at either the Consumer Electronics Show or Mobile World Congress. Many vendors will wait for Windows 8 to be ready and will try to enter the market with a dual-platform approach, hoping that the Microsoft brand could help them in both the business and consumer markets." "IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers," Ms Milanesi said. "This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal." Gartner analysts said enterprise sales of media tablets will account for about 35 per cent of total tablet sales sold in 2015. These sales will not, however, be clearly defined as enterprise purchases. Gartner expects organisations to allow tablets as part of their buy your own device (BYOD) programme. More of these tablets will be owned by consumers who use them at work. "This poses a big threat to vendors that thought about focusing on the enterprise market who will now have to become appealing to consumers as well," Ms Milanesi said. "This is exactly the same trend that vendors such as RIM had to face in the smartphone market. The difference here is that tablets have been created for consumers first and then relied on an ecosystem of apps and services that make them more manageable in the organisation. When the deployment will come from the IT department we believe that operating systems such as Windows 8 will have an advantage as long as they are not seen as a compromise in usability for the users." Android tablets are forecast to account for 31.9 per cent of media tablet sales in 2012. Gartner analysts said the main issue with Android tablets has been the lack of applications that are dedicated to tablets and therefore take advantage of their capabilities. Gartner's consumer survey data shows that consumers are running many of their apps on their mobile phones and their tablets.

Source: The Telegraph, UK