Android steals 20% of tablet market from iPad over past year
Android-powered tablets have taken 20% of the global tablet market from Apple's iPad over the past 12 months according to new data from ABI Research. While Android tablets have collectively managed to make a sizable dent …
Context & Ripple Effects
The tablet market is replaying the smartphone race in fast motion. In mid-2010 Android was barely a presence — one ZDNet analysis found the iPad blasting past Android in actual usage share — before a Bloomberg-reported fourth-quarter uptick showed Android tablets beginning to gain ground on the iPad.
First-order effects
- Apple loses its monopoly on the category it created: with Android at 20% globally per ABI Research, every incremental tablet sale is no longer automatically an iPad sale.
- Android hardware makers now have a credible aggregate footprint to market against Apple's single-device franchise.
Second-order effects
- App developers face a real second tablet platform to budget for, splitting tablet-specific engineering effort that until recently had one target.
- Pricing pressure builds from below as Android vendors compete against each other and against the iPad, squeezing margins across non-Apple tablets.
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds, tablets settle into the same two-platform structure as smartphones — Apple owning the premium tier while Android aggregates volume through many vendors — making unit-share the battleground even where Apple keeps profit-share dominance.
The trend: Tablets are consolidating into the same Apple-versus-Android duopoly that defines smartphones, with Android's vendor breadth converting early usage deficits into steady share gains.