Apple Loses Tablet Market Share To Android

(RTTNews) - Shipments of tablets for the third quarter of 2013 increased, driven by sales of Google's Android-based devices. Meanwhile, Apple continues to reign as the the No. 1 tablet seller, but recorded a sequential decline and losing its global market share to Android peers, reflecting the absence of a new iPad.

Worldwide tablet shipments for the third quarter was 47.6 million units, a 7.0 percent growth sequentially and 36.7 improvement from last year, according to research firm IDC.

"Android products once again drove much of the shipment growth in the market as iOS growth stalled and Windows tablets continued to struggle to win over consumers," IDC said in the statement.

iPad sales dropped to 14.1 million units for the quarter from 14.6 million in previous quarter. Year-over-year, iPad sales improved less than one percent. Nonetheless, Apple still tops the tablet market with a 29.6 percent share, but down from 40.2 percent last year.

One of the major reasons for the slowdown in Apple's tablet sales is due to the absence of new iPad launches in the second or third quarter. The makers of iPhone and iPads had shifted iPads product launch from early in the year to the fourth quarter in order to to capitalize on the huge spending during the holiday season.

With the new iPad Air shipping November 1 and the refreshed iPad mini with Retina scheduled to roll out later in November, IDC expects Apple to enjoy robust shipment growth during the fourth quarter.

Samsung is in second place with 20.4 percent share, up from 12.4 percent share last year. The South Korean electronics giant's tablet shipments more than doubled to 9.7 million from 4.3 million last year.

The third-placed Asus shipped a total of 3.5 million units in the third quarter, but up from 2.0 million in the previous quarter and 2.3 million last year. Lenovo, and Acer rounded up the top five vendor list with market share of 4.8 and 2.5 percent.