Ah, the never-ending battle betwixt iOS and Android moves from the smartphone battleground today into the tablet theatre of war as more and more Android based tablets come out to play and threaten the dominance of the Apple iPad.
According to an article over on Mashable by way of Business Week, although Android’s tablet only operating system, Android 3.0 Honeycomb isn’t out yet, Android tablets are doing reasonably well in the mobile space according to figures.
Those figures come from market research company Strategy Analytics which say that during Q4 of 2010 Android tablets rose to 22% market share, which equates to virtually a tenfold increase when compared to the previous quarter’s 2.3%.
According to the figures, strong sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab are the reason for the large jump. As for the Apple iPad, the figures show Apple in the last quarter shifted some 7.3 million iPad units while the tablet accounted for 75% of worldwide shipments in Q4 dropping down from 96% the previous quarter.
Google is holding an event on Wednesday where it is hoped they will release Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which would make Android tablets the main runner against Apple’s iOS tablet. However Apple is also due to release the Apple iPad 2 shortly, so maybe with the arrival of that, Apple may be able to fend off the Android tablet invasion for a while longer.
Of course iOS fanboys will jump to the defence of their favoured platform while the Android faithful will no doubt say that Apple has had its day and it is time to hand over the reigns to Android. But I’m pretty sure both Apple and Android will be around for quite some time vying for the top position.
