Apple’s wildly popular iPad claimed a whopping 80% share of the North American tablet market during the second quarter of 2011.
According to Alex Spektor, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, Cupertino continues to maintain a tight grip on the American tablet market that Amazon and others are finding difficult, but not impossible, to break.
“Apple completely dominates the North American tablet market, capturing 80 percent share of 7.5 million shipments during Q2 2011,” said Spektor.
“Apple remains a long way ahead of its main rivals such as Motorola, Samsung, RIM, Asus and HTC. A combination of cool branding, user-friendly hardware, entertaining services and savvy retail distribution has made Apple a formidable market leader.”
Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics director Neil Mawston added that Amazon could potentially challenge the iPad – if both the pricing and specs are competitive enough.
“Provided the pricing, screen size and hardware design are right, Amazon can be one of the main challengers to Apple’s dominance. Like Apple, Amazon has a strong brand, compelling content, sophisticated billing systems and widespread distribution,” Mawston explained.
“In effect, Amazon’s new tablet product represents a good opportunity to place an Amazon shopping cart in the hands of American consumers, offering optimized access to purchasing digital content or physical goods from the Amazon online store.”
