A new report from AppleInsider reveals some important sales data for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range. Over the past few years, IDC, Gartner, and Strategy Analytics have been releasing reports showing that the iPad range is dropping in marketshare whilst Samsung and other Android tablets have been increasing their marketshare.
Internal documents from Samsung, however, show a different picture, and it looks like the company even intentionally misled investors and analysts with false statements about tablet sales. Figures show that in 2011, the company had quarterly sales of low hundreds of thousands, totaling up to roughly one million Tab sales in 2011. In contrast, Apple sold 17.4 million iPads, the Amazon sold 5 million Kindle Fires and even Nook, which sold 1.5 million tablets. Samsung was in fourth place, despite being the first major company to release an Android tablet.
No major market research firm releases U.S. market share data for tablet sales since the iPad was released. Instead they show global market figures, which includes the huge amount of generic devices from unnamed companies. And whilst these cheap generic tablets might sell well (so improve the Android tablet marketshare), there’s little evidence to show they’re being used: web logs show that the iPad range is responsible for over 80 percent of tablet traffic.