Research firm IDC has revealed a stunning set of figures, that for the first time show Android in control of the tablet market, while Apple is surpassed by it. IDC’s study focuses on Q1 2013 shipments and the research firm claims that 56.5% of the market is dominated by Android.
The study also claims that apple only achieved a 40% market share. ASUS is the company in third place, beating Amazon as the third largest single vendor with a 5.5% share. What’s more impressive is the jump that ASUS registered, an increase of 350% year over year. The study focuses only on shipping units, not on actual number of end user sales. The difference? Well, Apple at least is claiming that it ships enough devices to fulfill immediate orders.
Android makers will ship millions of extra devices as they flood the market. One clear example is Samsung, who claimed that it had shipped 2.3 million units in Q1 2012, but when push came to shove, during the Apple lawsuit, they only had to show 1.2 million tablets sold in the same time frame. So, in the end it could be Apple still leading the market, not Android…
