Watch Out Apple! Android Tablet Market Share Forecasts Amended by IDC

We know that Google's Android dominates the Smartphone OS Market Share Globally. Now Apple has reason to worry about its leading tablet market share position also after International Data Corporation (IDC) released an updated forecast for the tablet industry. As per the data analysis company, Android's share of the tablet market will reach 48.8% in 2013 as opposed to the 41.5% previously forecasted by IDC for the same year.

Tablet Operating Systems, Forecast Market Share and CAGR 2012-2017 

Tablet OS	2013 Market Share	2017 Market Share	2012-2017 CAGR (%)
Android	48.8%	46.0%	14.8%
iOS	46.0%	43.5%	15.0%
Windows	2.8%	7.4%	48.8%
Windows RT	1.9%	2.7%	27.9%
Other	0.6%	0.4%	7.5%
Grand Total	100.0%	100.0%	16.6%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, March 2013

The gain in Android's market share comes at the expense of Apple's, which is expected to slide from 51% in 2012 to 46% in 2013. Nonetheless, both competitors have a common enemy in the form of the Windows tablet. The Seattle-based OS developer is expected to snatch approximately 4.5% market share from the two Californian natives between 2013 and 2017.

iCharts

Overall shipments of tablets is expected to peak at 350 units by 2017, a CAGR of 16.3% from 2013.

In my earlier post titled 'The Android Vs iOS Engagement Conundrum' I had mentioned that Android-powered tablets were virtually non-existent as compared to iOS's tablet market share. We needed to give time to Android-powered tablets to catch-up since it's tablet offerings were relatively new compared to Apple's entrenched tablet offerings. It seems IDC's forecast gives a strong confidence to Android's catch-up race, which will also help close the gap in the engagement conundrum between iOS and Android.

On a slight tangent, I think Google's recent re-org, which made Sundar Pichai the head of Google's OSs (Chrome and Android), will aide in converging Google's OS ecosystem across  multiple screen categories and help boost engagement.

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