Despite a flurry of tablets from competitors, Gartner Research expects that Apple will continue to own the majority of the worldwide tablet market through to 2015. It expects Apple to capture 69 percent of the tablet market in 2011, with its dominance dropping somewhat to about 47 percent by 2015.
“Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.”
Over the same period, Google Android will steadily increase its market share from about 20 percent in 2011 to about 39 percent in 2015. By 2015, RIM’s QNX (10 percent), HP’s webOS (3 percent) and MeeGo (1 percent) are predicted to complete the top five.
Noticeably absent is Microsoft and its Windows operating system. Gartner’s predictions focus on tablets powered by a “lightweight OS such as Android and iOS that is more limited than, or a subset of, the traditional fully featured OS such as Windows.”