U.S. tablet sales, excluding iPad sales, amounted to more than 1.2 million tablets sold from January through October and brought in $415 million in revenue reported the NPD Group. What tablet garnered the most market share? None other than the tablet deal that would not die a webOS death the HP TouchPad took a whopping 17% of the market. There are still however, great deals available on tablets, especially Black Friday-Weekend through Cyber Monday.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that when the HT TouchPad went below $100 when it was first blown out in fire sale made it the most popular tablet around. You can still get a deal on the HP TouchPad 32GB for $149.99 but you'll have buy an HP notebook computer to get the deal. ">Walmart.com still has the HP notebook computer cheap HP TouchPad available online. Office Depot announced that HP computer buyers on Black Friday/Saturday could get the 32GB TouchPad with an HP computer for $149.99.Black Friday Deals at OfficeDepot.com
Tablet hardware sales accelerated throughout the year. 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business.
Top 5 U.S. Tablet Brands (excluding Apple)
Retail Sales Jan-Oct 2011
|
Manufacturer |
Unit Share |
|
Hewlett Packard |
17% |
|
Samsung |
16% |
|
ASUS |
10% |
|
9% |
|
|
Acer |
9% |
Source: The NPD Group/Connected Handhelds Report
The next best deals on top-of-the-line tablets this week are:
- The 32 GB 1o.1" Motorola Xoom from Verizon Wireless for $199.99 with a contract.
- The Asus Eee Pad Transformer (10" 16GB) is reduced to $250 for the Black Friday Door Buster sale starting at midnight Friday, but you can get there very late Thursday night. The model is a Best Buy exclusive TF100-X1 of the Wi-Fi Transformer running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). It's an in-store only deal. Check out Best Buy Black Friday deals.
- The Samsung Galaxy Tab in its larger editions is hard to find reduced AT&T has bundled a free Samsung Galaxy SII (Skyrocket) with the 4G LTE Galaxy Tab 8.9 which costs $479.99. Or you can get Free $50 Gift Card and USB Connector with Samsung 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet at Best Buy.
- The BlackBerry Playbook has been reduced to $199 at many outlets.