Last year’s branded tablet shipments were impressive, reaching as high as 109 million units, according to Digitimes Research. Global branded tablet shipments surpassed their forecast growth, increasing 63% sequentially and 100.3% on year. They grew to 43.22 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, says Digitimes Research senior analyst James Wang.
Digitimes Research also raised its global branded tablet shipments for 2012 to 109 million units, with the Apple iPad reaching 58.7% of the shipments, while Android slates got to 38.8%. Of these shipments 83.9% were handled by Taiwanese device makers, meaning 91.07 million units, a respectable figure. In Q4 the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and Microsoft new slates brought non iPad shipments to 22.22 million units, beating by just a little bit the iPad’s 21 million units, in order to reach 51.4% of the total volume.
As far as the CPU preferences are concerned, TI OMAP was made big by Barnes & Noble and Amazon, with 21.81 million units shipped in 2012. Meanwhile, the late launch of Nvidia Tegra 4 could give Qualcomm and MediaTek space to increase their share.
