IDC have released the figures for their Tablets sales tracker for the last 3 months of 2012, and nearly everyone is doing well.
The figures show sales worldwide for all tablets, with 52,500,000 tablets sold in the last quarter of 2012 – a 75% increase in tablet sales on the same period a year ago.
Apple are still the dominant force, with 22.9 million iPads sold in those 3 months, which was a 48% increase – pretty good.
Samsung are second with 7.9 million tablets sold – a very impressive 263% increase, and interesting Amazon were third shifting 6 million tablets.
So what about the Nexus 7, generally regarded as a big success in both pricing and specification? Well Nexus 7 sales were grouped with all ASUS tablets, including devices like the Transformer, and surprisingly ASUS tablets as a whole “only” sold 3.1 million. Now that was a massive increase for ASUS, 403%, but in terms of the overall market its still a small part (less than 6%).
And lastly, poor old Microsoft. The launch quarter for Surface RT probably wasn’t what they hoped for, shifting only 900,000 devices. Ouch.
In all Apple’s dominance is coming down a little as new devices are launched, but its still the dominant platform at the moment. The much improved (primarily) Android tablet devices now on offer has made a difference, and it will be interesting to see how this year develops. Will there by an iPad Mini Retina soon, and will Microsoft need to counter the emergence of smaller tablets with a 7″ Surface RT device? And will developers finally start to make proper Android tablets apps – they can’t use the excuse the devices are out there any more. It should be an interesting year.
Link – IDC Tablet shipments
About Adrian Rogers
Technology Blogger & occasional musician, who works in neither industry, just to confuse!
I’m currently using an HTC 8X and 3rd gen iPad, and focus on all things Windows Phone and music making iOS apps.
Follow me on Twitter – http://twitter.com/shortnwide or e-mail me [email protected]
