Report: Android tablet shipments dominate iPad in Q2 2013

Research firm Strategy Analytics has released a report today on worldwide tablet market share for Q2 2013 highlighting how Android has seen a significant increase in market share during the quarter. Not only did it manage to capture 67% of the 51.7 million units shipped (up from 51% of the market last year), its increased market share came at the expense of a decline in tablet sales year over year for Apple.

Android is now making steady progress due to hardware partners like Samsung, Amazon, Google and White-Box tablets which, despite the fact that branded OEMs are lowering price-points and putting pressure on the White-Box manufacturers, are still performing well,” King added, “Apple iOS shipments were 14.6 million iPads in Q2 2013 which declined 14 percent annually.  In the same quarter a year ago the first Retina display iPads were launched which could partly explain the decline as there were no new models in this quarter.  However, to compensate that, iPad Mini which was not available a year ago, now freely available was expected to take the figure higher than 14.6 million”

Compared to Android’s 67% of total shipments, the report puts Apple at 28.3% of the market during the quarter, down from 47.2% a year ago, and Windows at 4.5%.

As always with these reports, there are a few things to keep in mind. Stratgey Analytics tracks shipments to retailers, not sales. Its numbers above also factor in White-Box tablets– those usually inexpensive, unbranded products that we never really get real sales figures for. Remove White-Box tablets and you get around 36.2 million total units in Q2 2013, up around 47 percent since last year. That would put Apple’s 14.6 million tablets sold during the quarter at a much higher market share in Q2, around 38%.

During its Nexus 7 & Chromecast event earlier this month, Google said that it had reached over 70 million tablet activations, up from around 10 million at the end of 2012. When it comes to sales vs shipped, Google’s Sundar Pichai also claimed that around 1 in 2 tablets sold worldwide in the first half of 2013 were based on Android.