Apple Tablet Shipments Lose Ground To Android

Research firm IDC believes the Google Android tablet market is besting Apple iPad shipments. The study focuses on Q1 2013 shipments in which the research firm says 56.5 percent of the market was dominated by Android. The company’s study claims that Apple achieved a 40 percent marketshare.

In third place, the IDC study claims that Asus managed to best Amazon as the third largest single vendor with a 5.5 percent share. If that number is correct, Asus has managed 350 percent year-over-year growth.

While those numbers are impressive, the study focuses solely on “shipping” units and not on the actual number of end-user sales. Apple has long claimed that it only ships enough devices to fulfill immediate orders. Android manufacturers, on the other hand, tend to ship millions of extra devices in an attempt to flood the market. In Q1 2012, Samsung told press reporters that it has shipped 2.3 million Android tablets. Then, during its Apple patent lawsuit, Samsung revealed just 1.2 million tablet sales when asked by a federal judge.

Even if 70 percent of all Android devices have actually been sold, Apple would still lead the market based on sales.

The IDC report focuses on every brand of tablet, even knock-off and local tablets that feature the Google Android OS.

While Google Android devices might be shipped more often, it is the Apple iOS platform that still dominates ad impressions, internet access, app downloading, and various other connected metrics. It is those metrics that have led many analysts to believe Apple is still dominating between 60 and 80 percent of the tablet market.

Sales “share” and shipments “share” are too very different things, and, while Apple is sure to lose some of its market as more competitors emerge, the market is still being left wide open.

The IDC study does not adjust for seasonal sales. Some companies such as Amazon receive most of their tablet orders during seasonal periods, most specifically during Q4.

While Apple may very well be losing market share to the Android tablet market, the IDC study does note that Apple is still the single largest tablet vendor with more than 40 percent of market sales.