The competitiveness between Android and iPad might have been hyped but still the supporters of each competitor say that their candidate leads in the race. But however looking at the progress of Android and iPad, it looks like Android has a slight edge over iPad.
It definitely doesn’t mean that iPad has a weaker market position as compared to Android. iPad has made it to the top headlines and has interestingly been in a good position for quite some time now. Some of the notable news headlines relating to iPad are ‘Apple iPad awaits back-to-school boom’, ‘All the world’s an iPad? Maybe’, ‘Apple’s Runaway Train: 9.25 Million iPads, 20 Million iPhones sold in Q3’, ‘Apple’s iPad surpasses 100,000 app mark’, iPad, iOS adoption heating up the business world’, etc.
It surely shows how strong iPad is in its market. It can even be discouraging for its rivals to note iPad’s success story. Of the above 100,000 app mark is what can be a nightmare for its competitors. But one should not conclude looking at just the success of iPad. iPad has even had its share of downfalls and news like ‘iPad share of tablet shipments fell in second quarter’ could be frustrating for iPad lovers as the story stated that iPad’s share has fallen from 94% to 66% even though the shipping of iPads were a record high at 9.3 million. This shows that even though it created a record in its own, but still there was a major fall in the market share.
Who ate up that big chunk is the question and to no one’s surprise, its Android who is eating up Apple’s iPad share. Tablets with Android operating system are gaining popularity and wherein Apple can still sell each and every iPad it makes, it needs to worry about that missing chunk eaten up by the Androids. The reason being that iPad faces real threat from this rival who has been inspiring companies to use Android operating systems in their Tablets and continues to inspire. Sony and Lenovo have been the latest entrants to plan Tablets out of their warehouse which would be powered with Android operating systems.
Apple is ruling the Tablet world with 66% share in the market but its major competitors are either using Android in their Tablets or will use it soon. For the list of competitors, Asus, HTC, Acer, LG, Lenovo, Motorola, HP, Sony and Samsung and there might be a few more to add in. this basically shows that Android does not have any market share but yes it is a powerful maker who has the maker movement and which can hurt iPad’s share majorly even in future.
There are talks about Android Tablets making a mark in the US market and its being said that Android tablets have arrived and well looks like they are already eating Apple iPad’s share. Again, one cannot leave out HP’s tablet who is surely here to stay and can anytime become a really big player in this competitive market. Android powered tablets are not as old as iPad but it surely has the potential to hurt iPad’s share further and can distract other consumers even to move out from a major US electronic store with an Android-powered tablet.
However Apple has a lawsuit filed against infringement of patents against HTC and reportedly most of the Android powered devices infringe the same patents. This might solely be the savior of iPad if the result is positive for them.