Apple shipped 15.4 million iPads during last year’s fourth quarter — a 39 percent rise from the prior three months. Nevertheless, Apple’s share of the global tablet market slipped seven percentage points, to 57 percent, “as many loyal Apple customers devoted their dollars to shiny new alternatives,” said Rhoda Alexander, senior manager of tablet and monitor research at IHS iSuppli.
One of the drivers of Apple’s share decline was Amazon’s 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablet shipments. However, Alexander believes the launch of Apple’s new iPhone 4S may have dampened iPad sales in last year’s seasonally strong fourth quarter.
“The primary alternative wasn’t the Kindle Fire — which debuted to solid sales in the fourth quarter — but Apple’s own iPhone 4S smartphone,” Alexander said.
The rollout of the iPhone 4S in October generated intense competition for Apple purchasers’ disposable income, Alexander said. This did “more to limit iPad shipment growth than competition from the Kindle Fire and other media tablets.”
Creating Market Chaos
According to IHS, the launch of value-priced tablets in the final three months of 2011 created chaos across the Android tablet marketplace. Among other things, it forced competitors to slash pricing in order to clear inventory, the firm’s analysts said.
The surge in non-iPad shipments “was achieved at considerable financial cost, with sharp price reductions across most of the competing Android tablets and actual product giveaways from a number of vendors as part of promotional efforts for other electronic products,” Alexander said.
Samsung Electronics boosted its fourth-quarter tablet sales sequentially by shipping an extra 290,000 units, but it was not enough to overcome the “respectable start” for Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Alexander said. As a result, Samsung fell to third place with an 8 percent share of the global tablet market during the fourth quarter.
By contrast, Amazon’s Kindle Fire…
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