Tablet shipments increased by 124 over the year%

The tablet market is storming, despite Apple’s unconditional leadership. Among the leading vendors, there is a fierce struggle for second place in the market for the supply of devices. Kindle Fire starts to lose, Samsung goes up. 

Total shipments of tablets worldwide increased by 124% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. Mainly, of course, thanks to Apple, whose iPad shipments amounted, according to DisplaySearch, to 13.6 million, thereby showing a 162% increase. Recall that Apple itself is more restrained in its estimates: the company believes that shipments of its tablets reached “only” 11.5 million, showing a 151% increase compared to the first quarter of last year.

Samsung pushed the Kindle Fire from second place to third. The Korean vendor managed to ship about 1.6 million devices, capturing 7.5% of the global market. Amazon, in turn, according to the results of the first quarter of 2012 (January-March) occupies only 4% of the market, having delivered 900 thousand Kindle Fire.  

RIM and ASUS share fourth place for two. Both BlackBerry PlayBook and ASUS Transformers shipped half a million devices, taking 2.3% of the market each. 

Interestingly, the results of the DisplaySearch study are very different from the figures shared by IDC at the end of the fourth quarter of 2011. According to them, Apple’s share was 54.7%, Amazon Kindle Fire had a solid share of 16.8%, Samsung closed the top three with a modest 5.8%. 

Perhaps the fact is that DisplaySearch and IDC think differently, perhaps the demand for an Amazon tablet has dropped significantly after the Christmas holidays (according to comScore, 54.4% of Android tablets are Kindle Fire after Christmas), plus, again, Amazon may be preparing to introduce a new device, so it is reducing supplies.