Tablet shipments jumped 75% year over year in the fourth quarter to a record 52.5 million units worldwide. But Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) posted much slower growth than rivals Samsung and Asus.
Market research firm IDC reported Thursday that tablet shipments rose faster than its Q4 target of 56% growth.
Apple remained the top tablet vendor thanks to its iPad Mini and fourth-generation full-size iPad, but its market share slipped for the second quarter in a row. Apple's Q4 share came in at 43.6% vs. 46.4% in Q3 and 51.7% in Q4 2011.
No. 2 Samsung Electronics experienced 263% year-on-year growth, shipping nearly 8 million Google (GOOG) Android and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 8 tablets during the quarter to grab 15.1% of the market, unchanged from Q3 but up from 7.3% a year earlier.
No. 3 Amazon lost ground, shipping 6 million Kindle Fire tablets in Q4 for 11.5% market share, compared with 15.9% a year earlier. Its year-over-year tablet shipment growth rate was 26.8%, well below the industry average.
The No. 4 vendor, Taiwan's Asus, grabbed 5.8% market share, up from 2% a year ago, shipping 3.1 million units. Asus was helped by continued strong shipments of its Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet. Its shipments rose 402% year over year.
Bookseller Barnes & Noble (BKS) was the only top five tablet vendor to post a year-over-year decline in shipments. It shipped nearly 1 million Nook tablets, down 28%.
Microsoft failed to reach the top five after shipping just shy of 900,000 units of its Windows Surface tablets, IDC says.
"New product launches from the category's top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season," IDC analyst Tom Mainelli said in a statement. "The record-breaking quarter stands in stark contrast to the PC market, which saw shipments decline during the quarter for the first time in more than five years."
source: http://news.investors.com/technology/013113-642683-apple-lags-industry-in-tablet-growth-rate-q4-tablet-shipmentstablet-marketamazon-kindle-firemicrosoft-surfacesamsung-tablets.htm
