Android tablets are quickly eating into the leading market share of the iPad from Apple (AAPL), with 26.9 percent of shipped tablets in the third quarter running the mobile operating system from Google (GOOG). A Strategy Analytics report published on Friday suggests that 4.5 million Android tablets shipped last quarter use Android, while 11.1 million are powered by Apple’s iOS platform. The overall tablet market is up 280 percent from a year ago, showing no signs of a slowdown any time soon, notes Fierce Wireless.
Reports such as this are a win for the Android camp. Still, while I respect the work done by Strategy Analytics, I’m not sure the report is meaningful. Aspects of these comparisons leave them open to considerable interpretation.
First is the definition of market share with respect to tablets sold vs. tablets shipped. Apple’s figures are tablets sold, which don’t include tablets sitting on store shelves, tablets en route to stores, or tablets sitting in a warehouse. By comparison, Android’s figures are the shipped number of tablets, so any devices sitting on store shelves count. These shouldn’t register for market share purposes.
What Constitutes an Android Tablet?
Next is the question: What is an Android tablet? It seems a simple question to answer, but it’s not. Why? The first Android tablets, going as far back as mid-2010, ran on Android 2.x, or Google’s smartphone platform. It wasn’t until February 2011 that the first Android 3.0, or Honeycomb, tablet arrived. So are the small 7-inch tablets that run the smartphone OS counted in the numbers? And what about the popular Barnes & Noble (BKS) Nook Color, which can easily be modified to perform as a full-fledged Android tablet?
I asked Strategy Analytics to clarify both of those points and received the following e-mail response from Neil Mawston, the analyst who wrote the report: ”Yes, the press release refers to shipments, not sales. All sub-versions of Android are included. Yes, the B&N Nook Color tablet is included in the tablet figures.”
While that clarifies the definitions used for the analysis, it also muddies the waters for actual market share of Android tablets in use by version. Another way to measure the number of Android tablets is one I started to use back in July. Google provides biweekly figures to developers that show a version breakdown of devices accessing the Android Market over the prior two weeks.
If you know the total number of Android devices in the market, you can use the percentage data to get a reasonable estimate of how many Android 3.x devices are actively being used. Earlier this week, Andy Rubin said 190 million Android devices have been activated. Google’s dashboard currently shows that 1.8 percent of devices hitting the market run Android 3.0 or better. That works out to 3.42 million Android Honeycomb tablets.
Where Are All These Androids?
The figure isn’t that far off from the 4.5 million shipped Android tablets that Strategy Analytics reports for the last quarter. Ideally, we’d need to see a quarterly figure of new Android activations to further refine this method. Activated devices are sold, not just shipped, so it provides a better measure of actual sales and therefore, market share.
Assuming that Android tablet sales are rising dramatically, I’m not sure I understand why. What has changed from the prior quarter for these devices? Not much, aside from a few minor platform updates to address a tablet OS that had been rushed to market. Aside from some price drops, I don’t see why consumers would suddenly be purchasing Android tablets. That doesn’t mean I consider the iPad the best tablet for everyone; I’m simply trying to understand the market share numbers.
Regardless of the Strategy Analytics report, perhaps the best indicator of which tablets are actually selling is to see what people are using. I’ve taken four cross-country trips in the past month and I’ve also been out and about in my local area. In all my travels, I pay attention to which mobile devices are being used. I saw iPads, smartphones, and laptops—but aside from my own 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, not a single Android tablet. Maybe I’m just traveling with the wrong crowd.
from businessweek.com
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