How Android surpassed the iPad and took over the tablet market

Android surpasses iPad and dominates the tablet market

August 8, 2013. Just one year later, Apple iPad lost its leading position in the tablet market, not only slipping to second place but also far behind Android. How did this happen? The famous technology blog Readwrite.com published a commentary article signed by Dan Rowinski today, revealing the answer to this question.

Rovinsky's commentary is as follows:

According to the latest tablet market tracking report released by market research firm IDC, tablet shipments fell 9.7% between the first and second quarters of 2013. This is the first time that the tablet market has seen a quarter-on-quarter decline in sales since Apple released the first iPad in 2010.

Oddly enough, Apple itself is most to blame for this. Apple sold just 14.6 million iPads in the second quarter, down from 19.5 million in the previous quarter and 17 million in the same period last year. You could argue that this is because the current iPad lineup is outdated, but the latest iPad and iPad mini were released in late October, so they were only on the market for nine months by the end of the second quarter.

Moreover, during the same period when iPad sales were declining, Android tablet sales were still growing. Why is this?

iPad? What iPad?

Apple launched the first iPad in the spring of 2010. The second generation came out in the spring of 2011, then the third generation in the spring of 2012, and the fourth generation iPad and the first generation iPad mini in late October of the same year.

To be honest, Apple's decision to launch the fourth-generation iPad last fall was a bit surprising, as the third-generation iPad had only been on the market for six months. Apple's move disappointed many consumers because the third-generation iPad they bought at a high price was completely replaced by the new product just six months later.

Apple has also reset its release schedule for future iPad products. Unless Apple is willing to release a new product every few months like Samsung, it will no longer release new products in the spring. Therefore, the market generally believes that Apple will release a new generation of iPad and iPad mini later this year, so that the new products can perform well during the Christmas shopping season at the end of the year and push device sales to the top.

Comparison of sales and market share of the top five tablet PC manufacturers in the second quarter of 2013 (sales in millions of units)

Overall, IDC estimates that tablet shipments in the second quarter of 2013 were 45.1 million units, down 9.7% from the first quarter. The sequential decline means that vendors sold 4.37 million fewer tablets in the second quarter than in the first quarter. Android tablet shipments actually continued to grow, as iPad shipments fell by 4.9 million units during the period.

The tablet market is still growing rapidly

Tablet shipments in the second quarter of 2013 increased by 59.6% from 28.3 million units in the same period last year, corresponding to an increase in sales of 16.8 million units. During the same period, iPad sales decreased by 2.4 million units. Although the iPad has lagged behind the tablet market, the overall market is still growing.

Comparison of tablet operating systems in terms of shipments and market share in the second quarter of 2013 (shipments in millions of units)

In the second quarter, Android tablet shipments reached 28.2 million units, corresponding to a market share of 62.6%. Compared with the same period last year, the comparison between Android tablets and iPads has completely reversed. In the second quarter of 2012, Apple's iPad had a market share of 60.3%. The sales of Android tablets in the second quarter of this year (28.2 million units) are almost equal to the total tablet shipments in the same period last year (28.3 million units).

How Android Took Over the Tablet Market

The world's first Android tablet was the Motorola Xoom, launched by Motorola in February 2011. It was the first and only device to run Android 3.1 Honeycomb, a mobile operating system designed by Google specifically for tablets.

Despite its impressive hardware, the Xoom lacked the features consumers wanted, was expensive ($800, or $600 with a two-year Verizon contract), buggy, and slow. For consumers who wanted to move away from the iPad-centric tablet market and into a true Android tablet, the Xoom was a major disappointment.

The reason is that there are too few Android apps for tablets. Although Apple has received stable support from developers, with the latest statistics showing a total of 375,000 apps, and this number is still growing, Motorola Xoom and other tablets based on Honeycomb still need to solve the problem of running smartphone apps on a larger screen.

Finally, Google and its Android manufacturing partners got their act together. Google released Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, which combined the best features of Android 2.3, or Gingerbread, and 3.1, or Honeycomb, and added a bunch of new features. Some of the quality issues have finally appeared on tablets, most notably the Nexus 7, released by Asus last summer, and the Nexus 10 and upgraded Nexus 7, released by Samsung this fall.

Android tablet makers also realized they could undercut Apple on price, challenging the iPad with devices that cost as little as $199, including Amazon's Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7, a collaboration between Google and Acer.

Samsung has found a version of Android that's particularly well suited to tablets, allowing it to continue releasing a slew of new products in its Note and Tab lines.

The result? Android tablets proliferated. Since Apple insisted on charging higher prices for its smartphones and tablets, Android had the opportunity to carve up a large portion of the market.

Application is key

The lack of tablet-specific apps remains a big problem for the Android ecosystem. Google doesn't reveal the number of apps it has for tablets, but it's certainly not as many as the companion apps for Apple's iPad. That's a big problem because apps are one of the key selling points of mobile devices, and the Android tablet ecosystem is incomplete without companion apps.

But the problem is not as serious as people think. Since the release of Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, Google has made it easy to develop apps for a variety of screen sizes using the same basic design. Google is now giving Android app developers a new way to develop apps that support different screen sizes. Google's Android Studio has developed a feature that supports different screen sizes.

What Google is essentially saying is that Apple can continue to count the number of apps that come with the iPad, but Google will help developers create apps that can run on any platform.

As an independent company, Apple is still the largest tablet company, but it has become increasingly isolated as the tablet market has fallen into the hands of Android.