Apple's Grip on the Tablet Market

Apple will continue owning the majority of the WW tablet market-- as it does nowadays-- at least up til through 2015, according to Gartner. 69% of tablets will carry iOS by 2011's end, and 47% of the market will in 2015.

Tablet Market

Gartner says most other vendors competing against Apple fail to give customers what they really want-- apps, services and slick user experiences. Instead, such vendors prefer to concentrate on hardware features, just as they did when competing against iOS on smartphones.

The analyst forecasts further growth for Android, from 20% WW tablet marketshare in 2011 to 39% in 2015. Google's decision (for the moment) to close down Honeycomb to all but a select group of developers is something of a double edged sword-- on one hand it will prevent fragmentation (and supposedly drive more control), on the other it will slow down price decline, thus capping its market share.

RIM's migration of its entire Blackberry portfolio to QNX (the Playbook OS) should offer customers a single consistent experience-- at least once the Playbook hits the market.

Finally, MeeGo and WebOS will remain stuck with limited customer appeal until they also manage to grow within the smartphone market.

Go Gartner Says Apple iOS to Dominate Tablet Market Through 2015