Projected Tablet Sales

The chart above shows the current (right) and projected (left) market shares for the various tablet devices out right now through the end of this year. Amazon, of course, had no tablet on the market in the 3rd quarter, but this projection estimates the Kindle Fire will gain 13.8% of tablet sales for the final quarter, putting Amazon in 2nd place, well behind Apple (who have a two year head start) but firmly ahead of everyone else, including Barnes & Noble, who have had a full year to gain traction with the Nook, but have failed to do so in any significant way.



Even though the NookColor has been priced at half the iPad's lowest price, B&N's lack of content support for both music and video, as well as a weak app environment, have hampered Nook adoption. This just goes to show how few people actually use multimedia devices for reading books: tablets are primarily a game platform, as evidenced by the top selling app charts. Comics are the only segment of the book trade making serious headway on color tablets, for obvious reasons.



Interestingly however, B&N are the only entry project not to lose market share through the holiday season (although they won't gain any either). Amazon's cannibalization will come primarily from Apple's share, with Samsung taking a heavy loss as well. Granted, these are only projections, but it's fairly clear than the Kindle Fire is the winner here: to claim 2nd place and close to 14% of any market in your first quarter of existence is a feat most products can only dream of.



The chart below shows the newly revised tablet sales forecasts for the coming years. As you can clearly see, the figures have been revised upward as the tablet adoption trend is projected to continue unabated for at least another three or four years, during which time tablet technology will continue to improve at a rapid pace and prices will drop until they reach a plateau somewhere around 2015. Again, these are only guesstimates, but they're based on expected production orders from reliable sources in the business of knowing what's going on. What will really happen is anybody's guess.