Android-based tablets will replace the iPad by 2014

Android’s share of the tablet market is expected to grow in the next two years. According to a recent study by eMarketer, at the moment the share of the iPad is 83%, but Android and Windows 8 will reduce its share to 76% next year, to 71% in 2013 and to 68% by 2014.

All this will happen thanks to inexpensive tablets like Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble NOOK. It is their sales that will help increase the share of Android in the tablet market. Kindle Fire went on sale just a few weeks ago, and Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, believes that 4 million of these devices will be sold by the end of the year. 

The updated version 4.0 will also contribute to the growing popularity of Android tablets. Samsung Galaxy Nexus became the first smartphone based on the new Ice Cream Sandwich platform, Asus Transformer Prime is the first tablet based on this updated platform. Its release is scheduled for early December. The estimated cost – $499 for a 32GB model ($599 for a model with 64GB memory) – is comparable to the cost of an iPad, the cheapest model of which also costs about five hundred dollars.

This will be the first swallow in the tablet market running on the new ICS. Next year, many manufacturers will want to release their tablet based on ICS. However, time will tell whether users will want to buy an iPad for the same money.