It’s a well-known fact that Apple rules the roost when it comes to tablets, but it seems that its rivals are starting to close the gap as far as market share is concerned. IDC is reporting that Apple’s tablet market share has dropped to 50.4% in the Q3 of this year, which dropped from 59.7% in Q3 2011. Samsung on the other hand, has managed to raise their tablet market share to 18.4%, up from 5.1% during the same period last year. To put those figures in perspective, Samsung managed to ship 5.1 tablets worldwide in in 3Q of 2012. That’s still a bit far off from Apple’s 14 million shipments, but you know what they say – Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“After a very strong second quarter, Apple saw growth slow as both consumer and commercial (including education) shipments declined, and rumors of a forthcoming iPad mini began to heat up,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, Tablets at IDC. “We believe a sizeable percentage of consumers interested in buying an Apple tablet sat out the third quarter in anticipation of an announcement about the new iPad mini. Now that the new mini, and a fourth-generation full-sized iPad, are both shipping we expect Apple to have a very good quarter. However, we believe the mini’s relatively high $329 starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter.”