Gartner: Still no true iPad challengers through 2015
Media tablet sales are set to grow from 17.6 million last year to 326.3 million in 2015, and the bulk of them will continue to be Apple iPads. So says Gartner, which on Thursday put forth a four-year estimate of tablet sales by operating system. The numbers reflect that Apple has a large head start with a mature tablet, as all other competitors are still struggling to catch up. That premise doesn’t surprise, but Gartner’s projected growth of QNX-powered tablets does.
Even over the next four years, as competing tablets and their supporting ecosystems mature, Gartner projects Apple’s iPad will hold a majority share of all tablets sales over the next four years. Android will continue to chase for the No. 2 spot but still manage just over a third of market share by 2015, while QNX and Microsoft slates bring up the rear. HP is considered to be out of the game completely due to abandoning the TouchPad hardware business with a massive inventory fire-sale. I think there’s a very slim chance that situation reverses itself due to speculation of HP replacing its current CEO, Leo Apotheker.
Here’s how Gartner sees the tablet market taking shape, with all figures in thousands:
A few thoughts jump to mind. First, I don’t doubt Apple’s dominance in the tablet market throughout the next few years. If anything, I think it’s understated by the estimates. That’s not to say the iPad is the best tablet for everyone, but it currently has the broadest customer appeal and most mature ecosystem for applications and services. Apple gave itself a good 18-month lead in the market and others are still scrambling to offer a fully comparable tablet experience.
I also wonder how Amazon’s upcoming tablet plays into the estimates as we already know the device is based on Android, even if it’s heavily customized so as to hide Google’s interface. The same holds true for the popular and extensible Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which ought to see a hardware refresh in the near future. I suspect that with weak sales of traditional Android tablets, these combination e-readers / tablets will make up the bulk of Android tablet sales, but Gartner makes no comment on that aspect.
Then there’s QNX. Earlier this week, I noted that Research In Motion shipped a scant 200,000 PlayBook tablets with QNX in the most recent quarter. That figure follows an estimated 500,000 PlayBooks shipped in the quarter prior to that. The data reflects shipped PlayBooks, not actual sales, and even if they were sales, I don’t see how Gartner expects RIM to sell 3 million PlayBooks this year. Even with a software update to add native email and support for Android applications, it appears impossible that RIM will sell 2.3 million tablets or more between now and the end of 2011.
It’s too early to call out any numbers for Microsoft tablets, although a touch-friendly Metro interface and ARM processor support for Windows 8 gets Microsoft in the game. Gartner expects a reasonably quick uptake once Windows tablets arrive, but I’ll wait and see the final product before taking a stab at sales. Regardless, the iPad is still the once and future king of tablets; at least for the next few years.
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RIM’s poor play: QNX on PlayBook before smartphones
Amid lackluster BlackBerry PlayBook sales, 1,000 production line workers have been let go at Quanta in Taiwan where the tablets are made. Quanta confirmed the layoff figures to DigiTimes, although the company didn’t comment on specific clients or activities of the former employees. The figure of 1,000 workers is estimated to be half of the total production resources used to manufacture Research In Motion’s tablet computer.
On its most recent quarterly investor call just last week, RIM reported shipping a scant 200,000 PlayBook tablets. In the prior quarter, the first one that included PlayBook shipments, the company shipped 500,000 units. Bear in mind that shipped doesn’t mean sold and the company hasn’t yet said how many tablets have actually been sold. Regardless, there’s a few problems here.
In a fast growing tablet market, PlayBook shipments should be growing, not shrinking. DigiTimes sources indicate that RIM expected to build and ship between 4 and 5 million PlayBooks in 2011, but it’s clear that the actual figure will be a small percentage of that number. And QNX, RIM’s future operating system for phones, is the featured platform for the tablet; if it fails to impress or doesn’t sell devices, the company is at risk for losing momentum before it ever gets QNX on BlackBerry handsets.
When RIM cut 2,000 jobs back in July, I noted that the company was taking too long to transition from its legacy BlackBerry OS to the more modern QNX platform. At the time, I said:
The entire situation reemphasizes that RIM has been too slow to change in a market that’s moving fast. The BlackBerry Storm, an attempt at an all-touchscreen device, was met with fanfare in 2008, but it never materialized as a solid competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Last year’s BlackBerry Torch was more evolution than revolution.
And the company’s plan to run future phones on a QNX-powered platform makes sense, but RIM bought QNX in April of 2010 and there are still no handsets announced for the new operating system. Instead, new Bold handsets are the latest offerings announced; they appear delayed and will run a new version of BlackBerry OS, not QNX. They’re also not expected to be upgradable to QNX either.
QNX runs great on the PlayBook and I actually enjoy using it. What the PlayBook can do, it does very well; the bigger problem is what it can’t do. Although there’s a software update expected next month to address some of these problems, the device still has no standalone, native email application and doesn’t yet run the promised Android apps that will help offset a relative lack of third-party software.
In hindsight, RIM should have focused its QNX efforts on handsets before trying to compete in the tablet market. Early this year, RIM suggested that QNX is best suited for dual-core chips, but given that the QNX-powered Colt handset is expected to use a single-core chip, that justification to push tablets first now seems weak at best.
As it stands today, it appears that the company tried to jump in to tablets first in order to leverage the market’s fast growth. But as Google Android Honeycomb tablets have illustrated, you can’t simply show up for the race and expect to win. It takes a full-featured solution, a broad ecosystem, and smart marketing to gain sales. And as much as the tablet market is growing, it is still dwarfed by smartphone sales.
RIM would have gained more bang for the buck if QNX was first put on its smartphones. Instead, it appears that the first run of the PlayBook is a relatively lost cause for the company and it will have to hope that software updates are enough to have consumers take a second look at RIM’s first tablet.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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- Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
- The rise of tablets in the enterprise
- A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player
The number of connected devices is steadily on the rise, but it’s not smartphones or computers that will lead us to the 50 billion connected devices expected by the year 2020. Rather, the Internet of Things — numerous smart objects that speak to the web and one another — is the next wave of wireless and will power a wide range of devices as we want remote access to everything all the time.
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