Apple is still leading the Tablet market with a good position in the world

Apple’s iPad (in all forms), although has lost some of the market share, but remained on top in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC.

Apple showed 43.6% of market share for that quarter, shipping 22.9 million tablets. Although, it is a good percentage but still the company found the loss of 6.8% of market share in the case of iOS tablets. Samsung is on second position with the shipment of 7.9 million units of tablets, in all its forms, accounting for 15.1% of market share. Samsung found 263% of year-on-year growth.

Considering other companies; Amazon shipped 6 million tablets and got 11.5% of market share, ASUS got 5.8% of market share, Barnes and Noble got 1.9% of market share in the top five positions while 22.1% of total tablet sales are attributed to the other manufacturers including Microsoft’s Surface tablet.

You can see that even the combined market share of Samsung, Amazon, ASUS and Barnes & Noble is less than the Apple’s market share.

According to IDC, the tablet market grew 75.3% year-on-year, i.e. up from 29.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 52.5 million in Q4 2012, and 74.3% from the previous quarter, when the total of 30.1 million units were shipped.

You can see the stats in the table below;

“We expected a very strong fourth quarter, and the market didn’t disappoint,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, Tablets, at IDC. “New product launches from the category’s top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season. The record-breaking quarter stands in stark contrast to the PC market, which saw shipments decline during the quarter for the first time in more than five years.”