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Apple Continues Reign as Tablet King

For Apple, the view from the top is looking better and better.

August 14, 2012

For Apple, the view from the top is looking better and better.

The Cupertino tech giant continued its reign as the "king of all media tablets," nabbing nearly 70 percent of the market in the second quarter, according to new data from research firm IHS iSuppli. Rival Samsung took the No. 2 spot with 9.2 percent of the market, followed by Amazon with 4.2 percent, Asus with 2.8 percent, and Barnes & Noble with 1.9 percent.

Leader Apple shipped 17 million new iPads during the second quarter, up a whopping 44 percent from 11.8 million in the first quarter. The increase in shipments allowed Apple's market share to grow 11.5 percentage points to 69.6 percent, up from 58 percent in the first quarter.

Apple has not seen such a high market share since the first quarter of 2011. At this pace, the company is poised to reclaim much of the share it gave up last year.

"Apple is making all the right moves to rebuild its dominant position in the tablet space," Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and monitor research for IHS, said in a statement. "The company is pushing visual performance boundaries with the new iPad, while providing value customers with a lower-priced alternative, the iPad 2."

Plus, Apple is showing no signs of slowing down. The company is widely expected to be prepping a with a 7-inch screen for release this fall. But Apple could face increased competition in the tablet market this year from Google's Nexus 7 and Microsoft's Surface tablets.

"Apple's major media tablet rivals, Google and Microsoft, hope to challenge Apple in the second half of the year, but will be facing formidable headwinds with no sign that the market leader is backing off of its aggressive strategy in the market," Alexander said.

Even so, Google and Microsoft have invested heavily to develop an app ecosystem for their tablets, a major factor of Apple's success that other competitors have found difficult to replicate. Both have the potential to be major players in the market.

"Microsoft in particular will be one to watch, with its existing Xbox gaming community on the consumer side and its operating-system dominance in business markets," Alexander said.

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