Washington: Android and Samsung Electronics reportedly emerged as the biggest winners in last year’s tablet market with a 68% share of total sales. According to market research company Gartner, 195.4 million units of tablets were sold to end users, following sales of low-end, smaller screen devices, and purchases by first time buyers. With 62% of the market, Android turned out to be the biggest tablet operating system.
According to Greenbot, in 2012, Google’s OS trailed Apple’s iOS by a margin of about 8 million tablets, but by the end of last year had turned that into a 50 million-unit lead. Samsung sold almost 121 million tablets with Android, for a 61.9% share, compared to 53.3 million units and a 45.8% share in 2012. While the sale of Apple’s tablets increased from 61.5 to 70.4 million units, the growth in overall market resulted in a drop in company’s share from 52.8% to 36%.
Meanwhile, Apple’s strong fourth quarter helped it maintain the top position among the manufacturers with Samsung occupying the second position recording 336% growth of the worldwide tablet vendors.