While there is some hope of HP TouchPads returning for $99, Gartner says that Apple and the iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market.
Worldwide media tablet sales to end users are on pace to total 63.6 million units in 2011 reported Gartner. Apple’s iPad is projected to account for 73.4 percent of worldwide media tablet sales in 2011.
Beyond Apple iOS and the Android operating system (OS), Gartner does not expect any other platforms to have more than 5 percent share of the tablet market in 2011.
“We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said.
Here's where it gets interesting. Gartner shows 2,053 Thousand webOS HP TouchPad tablets sold in 2011. Previous calculations suggested that less than a million TouchPads were manufactured for the United States market which means there maybe a chance that more will be sold, but we can't be sure until HP decides what it will do with the PC unit.
Android tablets are on pace to ship 11 million units in 2011 accounting for 17.3 percent of media tablet sales. This is up only slightly from Android’s 2010 market share of 14.3 percent. Gartner’s forecast for the Android OS has been lowered by 28 percent from last quarter’s projection
“So far, Android’s appeal in the tablet market has been constrained by high prices, weak user interface and limited tablet applications” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "Google will address the fragmentation of Android across smartphone and tablet form factors within the next Android release, known as ‘Ice Cream Sandwich,’ which we expect to see in the fourth quarter of 2011. Android can count on strong support from key OEMs, has a sizeable developer community, and its smartphones application ecosystem is second only to Apple’s.”