According to Gartner, 195 million tablets were sold in 2013, 68% more than in 2012 and confirming the trend of substitution of the laptop by the tablet.
Android won in 2013 as the preferred tablets worldwide and reached the figure of 120 million tablets sold with the Google 's operating system. As regards Apple, it just sold 70.4 million units of iPads. It is a real change, as Apple controlled the market just one year ago. However, Android doubled the number of tablets sold in 2013, up by 126%, while iPad was left with a growth of only 15%. Three years ago there was only iPad on the market.
By brands, iPad with 36% of the market share in units sold remains the best selling brand but now it is followed by Samsung with 19% market share while Asus and Lenovo has also gone strongly up to achieve a market share of 5.6% and 3.3% respectively. Finally, a significant 31% of sales is divided among small manufacturers importers in Asia at low prices.
With respect to Microsoft, it continues suffering a lot as it only sold 4 million tablets in 2013, which means a tinny 2% of market share.
The future seems to indicate that Apple will continue to reign in the high range of tablets but will steadily losing market share in favor of more affordable models using Google 's Android system.
