Apple's tablet lead shrinks as Android gains momentum

IDG News Service - Apple's once-dominant lead in the fast-growing tablet market is shrinking as buyers move to Android tablets, which are cheaper and available in different sizes, according to separate research released by IHS and IDC on Wednesday.

Tablet shipments during the third quarter this year totaled 47.6 million units, growing by 36.7% compared to the same quarter last year, according to IDC. Android tablets drove the growth, while Apple's iPad shipments were flat and Windows tablets continued to struggle.

Apple maintained the top spot in tablet shipments, totaling 14.1 million iPads during the quarter, growing by just 0.6% compared to the previous year. The company's tablet market share fell to 29.6% during the third quarter, down from 40.2% a year ago.

The current tablet market share of 29.6% is Apple's lowest to date, IDC said. Research firm IHS pegged Apple's third-quarter market share at 29.7%.

Apple's tablet shipments slowed due to a delay in product launches to the fourth quarter from earlier in the year. But the company is poised to regain market share with the new iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina display, which will start shipping in November.

"With two 7.9-inch [iPad Mini] models starting at $299 and $399, and two 9.7-inch models starting at $399 and $499, Apple is taking steps to appeal to multiple segments," said Jitesh Ubrani, IDC research analyst, in a statement.

Samsung was the biggest beneficiary of the growth in Android tablets, holding 20.4% market share during the third quarter, up from 12.4% a year ago. The South Korean company's tablet shipments totaled 9.7 million units, growing by 123% compared to last year. Asustek was in third place with shipments up 53.9% to 3.5 million. Lenovo was in the fourth spot, with tablet shipments of 2.3 million, growing by a whopping 420.7%. Acer was in fifth place, with quarterly shipments growing by 346.3%.

While Apple is the solo tablet vendor with iOS, the sheer volume and spate of sub-$250 tablets has made Android a leading tablet OS, said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet research at IHS.

"The erosion in Apple's unit shipment market share was inevitable," Alexander said in a statement.

Samsung took some cues from its smartphone market and expanded its tablet offerings at different prices, Alexander said. But the low margins of Android devices have hurt the profits of tablet makers.

"Cheaper almost always wins the volume race, and competitors were quick to adjust pricing when it became clear that it was impossible to achieve anything close to Apple's unit growth at the same price level," Alexander said.

The overall installed base of Android tablets received an assist from a group of "other" small tablet vendors, which held the single largest market share in the IDC and IHS surveys. The group includes regional tablet vendors in China that ship sub-$100 tablets with 7-inch screens, cheap components and older versions of Android. Tablet shipments from that group totaled 16.8 million units according to IDC, and 16.4 million according to IHS.

The return rates on those cheap tablets are high, and the devices don't last too long. The cheap tablet business model is not yet proven, analysts said.

"Shipments alone won't guarantee long-term success. For that you need a sustainable hardware business model, a healthy ecosystem for developers and happy end users," said Tom Mainelli, research director of tablets at IDC.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Netgear Wifi Analytics (for Android)

Pros Free. Easy-to-navigate UI. Handy tools for optimizing home Wi-Fi.

Cons Bare bones, basic tool. Not for professional Wi-Fi deployments. Bottom Line Netgear's WiFi Analytics is a free Android app that's very handy when it comes to troubleshooting and monitoring a home network, and can be used with just about any router.

By Samara Lynn

Netgear's WiFi Analytics is a free Android app that I find very handy when it comes to troubleshooting and monitoring a home network. It's simple, but that simplicity is its strength and gives home users insight into a home wireless network, without need to know a lot about networking.

What it Does and Where to Get
This free app available on Google Play, checks the strength of a wireless signal, network status, which channels are most crowded with wireless networks, and more.

Relatively small at 459k, the app does not take up a lot of storage space on my Droid Razr M running Android 4.1.2. The app requires Android 2.2 and up.

Using the App
I have my phone connected to my test WiFi network using Netgear's R6300 router. As soon as I opened the app, the home page showed that I was connected to the router's WiFi. The same screen also has a meter with measurements of signal strength broken into Poor, Good, and Best. My network connection was in the low end of the Good area of the meter. I could also see that my signal strength was at -45 dBm and at 56%. Additionally, this screen has a button that lets you adjust the scanning time that the apps performs of the network.

There are several icons at the bottom of this screen. One is of a meter/gage, and gets you back to the screen meter view mentioned above.

The next icon is "Home." Tapping, takes you to a screen labeled "Home Testing", and is an extremely cool and useful feature. From this screen, you can test and record the signal strength for different areas in your home. By default, there are already rooms set up including: Living Room, Bedroom 1, Office…etc. You can add or edit any room. You move throughout your home and test the signal strength for every room. This feature would be fantastic for help deciding where in one's home is the best location to place a wireless extender.

Another icon at the bottom is represented by the traditional Wi-Fi symbol – tap it and all Wi-Fi networks in proximity are displayed. You can see which channel each router/access point in the area is using. If you are getting slow performance, you can adjust your channel settings if one seems crowded (careful with this, as depending on the country there are a limited number of channels you can use for the 2.4 and 5GHz bands).

Other information displayed about neighboring networks includes SSID name, encryption level, MAC address of each access point, and signal strength. You can tell the app when to auto-scan for neighboring wifi networks from this screen and you can filter the view to display only 2.4 GHz networks or only 5GHz.

Another menu option at the bottom of the screen opens the "Channel Interference" view. This view shows you the worst and best channel to set a network to; recommends channels; and shows how many networks are on a specific channel.

The next icon opens a graph of the signal strength of all nearby access points. This is a great feature for those who routinely connect to public Wi-Fi. You can quickly see which hotspot's access points in a given area are emitting the strongest wireless signal.

Finally, there is one last icon on the bottom of the home page screen which shows a real-time graph of signal strength over time.

Remember, this is a pretty bare-bones app that is ideal for use in a home networking situation. Small business Wi-Fi deployments would be better served by more robust tools such as inSSIDer for Office, or WiFiBuilder, both of which have additional capabilities and analytics for professional deployments.

Simple Efficiency
It continually amazes me, how Wi-Fi apps are allowing us to turn our mobile devices into wireless tools that years ago, you would need dedicated, expensive hardware to get some of the same information about wireless networks. While the Netgear Wi-Fi Analytics app is simple, and provides no customization options, it's useful and efficient at displaying basic wireless network information that can be used to optimize the wireless networking experience. It's an easy 4 out of 5 stars for networking utilities.

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