According to IDG iPad shipments increased only a paltry 48% year over year in Q4 2012 vs Q4 2011. Samsung, 263% increase. Nice. Yeah, but increases in numbers need to have a little perspective attached and when you look at units shipped, Apple is still killing it.
Depending on how you want to look at the data, either Samsung is eating Apple’s lunch in the tablet world (with a 263% growth year-over-year) or Apple is just mopping the floor with everyone else (Apple shipped 22.9 million units in Q4 2012 compared to Samsung’s 7.9 million). Marketshare? Apple still leads by a healthy margin, 43.6% Q4 2012, but that’s down from 51.7% in 2011.
Should Apple be worried?
Of course not.
Even looking at the table and seeing how the data play out, you have to figure that Apple has lots of tricks up its sleeves in the tablet department. I’m not seeing too many people trying to get leaked pictures of the next Samsung tablet (Galaxy S4 is a different story). Apple’s market share is slipping purely because there are more good non-Apple tablets out there now. That’s it. The iPad has some real competition. The Galaxy and Nexus tablets are supposed to be great devices. This is awesome for Apple and the tablet world as a whole.
Why?
Because it just means that we’ll hasten the transition to a world where a powerful tablet is the device you’ll carry around and you’ll have a more powerful computer on your desk for everything else.
Yes, according to IDC (via TNW) the tablet market is changing and Apple is on a downtrend, but…Apple can whether the storm just fine.
Tablet from Flickr by Groume.