Over the past year, Android has captured around 20 percent of the market share. However, not a single tablet has even become close to that of Apple’s tablet has done.
ABI Research analyst Jeff Orr says many vendors have introduced media tablets, but all of them looks and works exactly the same, none has done what the competitors are not capable of doing. Most have introduced products at prices superior than similarly-configured iPads. Apple is not one of those companies that like to wait for others to produce first before taking action, has developed its second-generation iPad media tablet while they kept the price of the product unchanged.
The analyst also held responsible fragmentation of the Android OS for stalling overall app creation.
Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb are the three different versions of Google’s mobile OS that can be found on different tablets. This introduces a challenge to app developers who got no choice but to pick the best version and may hold off on development based on the market possibility of a given version.
The advantages of open software platform development have not been realized for media tablets.
Google hopes to defrag some of those fragments with the upcoming release of Ice Cream Sandwich, the first flavor of Android designed for both smartphones and tablets bundled with various features and sizes. The latest gossip claim that Google wants to rush the production so that Ice Cream Sandwich could be launched as early as October. Google aims to counter the threat of the upcoming Apple iPhone.
Orr also believes that the released of cheaper Android tablets released this year will result for people doubting the functionality of the device.
De-featured, low-cost media tablets presented by more than fifty vendors in 2011. This will certainly help in bolstering annual growth for the category, but it also creates a negative view in the minds of the mass consumer audience regarding the functionalities of the media tablets by next year.
With the Android tablets still in the “early adopter stage,” Orr believes that more positive user experiences needed push the market forward.
A report from Needham analyst Charlie Wolf previously this week uttered about a similar outlook. The world can look at an 85 percent share for the iPad this year. Wolf thinks Apple is going to lose some of its dominance to Android over the next preceding years, but will still keep around 60 percent of the tablet market by 2020.