Plannin' On It

So what does it mean to be the #2 tablet maker? The numbers in the article are a little confusing, so let’s see if we can figure it out. From the article:

In total, the U.S. tablet market—excluding Apple—saw sales of more than 1.2 million units and retail revenue of $415 million from January through October, according to a new study from NPD.

Ok, but let’s include Apple. From Apple’s earnings releases, we know they sold about 25.1 million iPads in the first nine months of 2011. We don’t know how many they sold in October, but for simplicity’s sake we’ll take the average of January through September: 2.8 million.¹ That gives us a total of 27.9 million iPads sold, and 29.1 million total tablets sold. With those numbers, Apple has 96% of the tablet market for 2011. Everybody else is splitting that other 4%. Now that we have that, let’s see what’s next:

HP managed to grab 17 percent of the share.

Remember, that’s 17% of the 4%. That means HP, the #2 tablet maker, has 0.7% of the market. And how did they do it? With a fire sale.

Samsung has been in the tablet business longer than anyone outside of Apple, moving quickly to release the 7-inch Galaxy Tab a year ago. Since then, the company has released a variety of tablet sizes, including a 10.1-inch version that is able to connect to a high-speed wireless network. As a result, it had 16 percent of the non-iPad market and is poised to overtake HP in the coming months for the No. 2 spot.

0.6%.

That leaves 2.7% for Asus, Motorola, etc. I’m not the first to say this, but I’ll say it anyway: There is no tablet market, just an iPad market. At least, so far. With the release of the Kindle Fire I have no doubt these numbers will look very different a year from now. But for now talking about a #2 tablet maker is just silly.

^1. Considering the trend of iPad sales, and that this is a holiday quarter, that is a very low estimate.