Apple iPad Will Dominate Tablet Space

The research firm iSuppli says that the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad will dominate the tablet market for at least two more years. “The iPad will account for an overwhelming 74.1 percent of global tablet shipments in 2010, with the remaining 25.9 percent consisting of a mix of older PC-type tablet products and competitive slates,” the firm’s latest research says. iSuppli further claims that the iPad’s market share will be above 70% in 2011 and above 62% in 2012.

The forecast is, of course, an educated guess. It assumes that no major PC company like Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) or Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) or smartphone company like Research-In-Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) can create a competing tablet in the next couple of years. It also assumes that the Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android OS cannot take share in the tablet market the way it has in smartphones. By some measurements, use of the Android OS has passed that of Apple’s operating system, despite the fact that the search company’s software has been in the market for less than two years.

The most compelling argument that iSuppli puts forward is that the 200,000 application App Store dwarfs any other comparable software supermarket. These applications have helped Apple move into multimedia, gaming, search, and social media. The store is also critical to the iPad adoption in the business world as the Store adds more and more business applications.

As iSuppli concludes “Apple’s complete integration of hardware, software, operating system and applications is a major piece of what makes the device a standout. And on that basis—an integrated hardware/software design—we don’t see anything in the marketplace at present that seems likely to rival what Apple is offering in tablets today.”

That is unless Android can reprise its success in the smarphone market.

Douglas A. McIntyre