Android Tablets Will Prevail Against iPads By 2014

Android will win through against Apple iPads in an exploding market for tablets by 2014, according to analyst Mike Abramsky at RBC Capital Markets.

Tempering the flame of Apple’s iPad 2 launch, he wrote in a research note that he expects the global revenue from tablets to rise to £42 billion  in the next three years. By that time he predicts that Apple will have sold 63 million iPads but its market share would lie second to Android tablets of variable quality.

“A lot will be highly commoditised with not a great user experience,” he said of the profusion of Android tablets. “We think the leading ones are from Motorola, Samsung and HTC – but there are a lot of these android tablets flooding the market so that’s heading for an inevitable shakeout.”

Shakeout Will Remove Smaller Competitiors

The impending doom his “shakeout” implies will hit the numerous suppliers of tablets that will arise in the Asian markets. These will primarily be budget-priced tablets that may help to seed the market but will ultimately fail because of the strength of the higher quality brands.

Abramsky is predicting that 40 percent of the 2014 market will be using Android, closely followed by iPad’s 34 percent. Trailing behind on 13 percent will be Microsoft Windows ahead of Rim Playbooks (eight percent) and HP WebOS tablets on five percent.

With just over 20 million tablets in use today, the market potential of over 180 million sales by 2014 is unexploited. The figures from RBC, and other analyst firms, are aimed to guide investors with best-guesses and are therefore highly speculative. There is no template for prediction based on the smartphone market because this, too, has yet to mature. Though there is no doubt in the minds of analysts that Android will repeat its success in the smartphone market, the lower placings are not so easily “guesstimated”.

For example, a recent IDC report agrees that Android and iPad will dominate but adds that  webOS could be the dark horse because of the strength of the HP brand in consumer and business markets. The arrival of yet-to-be-tested operating systems such as MeeGo from Intel (and formerly Nokia) has yet to be fully considered.