This article is more than 1 year old

Winter for webOS, winter for Droid, but springtime for iPad!

Sing along with the fondle-slab forecast

IDC has upped fondleslab shipment forecasts as the mature PC market looks set to plateau.

The beancounter reckons 62.5 million tablets will be flogged into channels worldwide this year, up nearly 17 per cent on the previous estimates, while the mature PC market is forecast to edge up just 3 per cent.

The increase comes on the back of HP's TouchPad discount fest – IDC reckons HP will sell-in one million units this year – and growing competition with new entrants and products set to take on kingpin Apple.

"We expect shipment totals to continue to grow in the third and fourth quarter, as additional vendors introduce more price-competitive Android products into the market and Apple works to maintain its dominance in the category," said Tom Mainelli, IDC research director.

Last quarter, Apple sold 9.3 million iPads globally, accounting for more than 68 per cent of the market (up from 65.7 per cent in Q1) and RIM unveiled the PlayBook. Both vendors pushed down Android-based devices with Droidslab market share slipping over seven percentage points to 26.8 per cent.

"Apple's iOS share will continue to lead by more than 40 percentage points over Google's Android for the remainder of the year, but we expect Apple's share to fall closer to 50 per cent by the end of the forecast period as manufacturers bring new tablets to market," said IDC.

The HP tablet fire sale will boost webOS market share to 4.7 per cent in Q3, but with no obvious blueprint to license or sell the OS to rivals, it is forecast to shrink "back to zero" by the start of 2012. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like