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Apple dominates the growing tablet market with 68 percent share, according to IDC

Apple dominates the growing tablet market with 68 percent share, according to IDC

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Unsurprisingly, Apple's iPad continues to dominate the new but quickly expanding tablet market, according to the latest data from IDC.

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new ipad main pic
new ipad main pic

Unsurprisingly, Apple's iPad continues to rule the new but quickly expanding tablet market, according to the latest data from IDC. In Q2, the market as a whole grew 66 percent year-over-year to reach nearly 25 million tablets sold — and the iPad has a whopping 68 percent marketshare. IDC's numbers show that Apple shipped 17 million iPads in Q2 of this year, compared to 9.2 million in the year-ago quarter, an 84 percent growth rate. As the first full quarter where the new iPad was available, it's not surprising to see this boom

Amazon, Asus, and Samsung didn't ship nearly as many units as Apple did, but saw their small piece of the market continue to grow as well. Samsung's 2.4 million shipments were more than double what the vendor did a year ago and gave Apple's chief rival almost 10 percent of the market. Amazon shipped 1.2 million Kindle Fire devices, good for third place with five percent of the market, while Asus shipped 855,000 tablets in the quarter, up 115 percent year-over-year. This growth came at the expense of Acer, who dropped from third place last year to fifth place in Q2 2012 — its 385,000 tablets shipped represented a 39 percent drop. The non-iPad tablet market still obviously needs a kick, but perhaps the Nexus 7 launch and upcoming Windows 8 tablets will finally wrestle away some of Apple's dominance.