Despite various rival products set to be launched, Apple, Inc.'s iPad is unlikely to face a viable competitor until 2011, according to market research firm iSuppli Corp. This would allow Apple to maintain a dominant share in the tablet market at least through 2012, iSuppli has further forecast.
The iPad would account for a 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. Despite the arrival of the first real iPad competitors in 2011, Apple still would maintain a prevailing 70.4 percent share of shipments, iSuppli has said. Even in 2012, the iPad would continue to control nearly two-thirds of shipments, at 61.7 percent, as the competition strives to develop ecosystems of tablet apps and content that can match up with those of Apple.
iSuppli's forecast of the competitive landscape for the iPad is based on the short history of the iPhone market.
The iPad is in a similar situation as the iPhone when it first arrived, it has been observed. Launched in June 2007, the iPhone was followed by a range of competing products during the next five months to two years. However, it took almost three years for the competition to offer phones that were not just comparable to the iPhone, but also were truly differentiated and superior in some respects, iSuppli's mobile market research indicates.
There presently are numerous products identified by iSuppli as iPad competitors, such as Android- and Windows 7-based tablets from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo. However, none of these is a serious competitor to the iPad from a solution perspective, iSuppli believes. Further, it believes that the most interesting near-term iPad competition is likely to come from HP, which has the requisite experience in building PC-level devices, as well as access to a proprietary WebOS through the company's Palm acquisition. Nonetheless, HP's iPad challenger is unlikely to appear before 2011 and probably will include multiple products. This would include a tablet with significant creation capabilities targeted at the enterprise market, in addition to one or more consumption-style devices targeted at consumers.
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