The Wall Street Journal this morning reported Apple has 95% of the tablet market. Amazing, in the face of virtually no competition! Also, Apple has 99.9% of the “electronics starting with i” market. But they aren’t the only ones with big marketshares in questionably competitive areas…
-Toyota has 85% of the market for “sudden, unexpected, OH CRAP, 0 to 60” cars.
-Snapple has 100% of the “greatest stuff on earth” market (tm Dan)
-Gear Diary has 100% of the market for blogs named Gear Diary!
-Coca Cola has 100% of the “secret formula cola” market.
-Google has 93% of the “Customers are trained to think privacy is overrated” market.
-Microsoft has 100% of everything. Even the antitrust laws.
In all seriousness, why is this news? Is anyone shocked that the iPad is winning when their competition is expensive hybrid laptops and knockoff Android tablets? Sure, the WSJ added a caveat that more competition was coming, but the headline was purely designed to raise eyebrows. Wake me up when the Galaxy Tab, NOOKcolor, etc have all been out for a few months.
What’s your favorite non-exciting statistic? Share it below!
I really think that this report served two purposes:
– To try to grab a ton of money for the reporting company.
– To set a ‘stake in the ground’ about the market as it stands at the end of 2010.
Before the iPad launched there were dozens of articles saying ‘Apple didn’t invent tablets’, and pooh-poohing the iPad as a dumbed down tablet / over-sized iPod. Yet we have seen the impact over the last 6 months. While Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Panasonic and others still make tablets, and they still occupy their nice little niche, Apple has created a completely new tablet market and has sold more units in 6 months than the entire tablet industry managed in 10 years!
But I agree – this is non-news, other than as a pre-cursor to actual competition. A year from now we’ll have new iPads and multiple Android tablets as well as likely others running different OS versions! Then the market share picture will be worth seeing!