The Pathetic State of Android Tablets

We know that all Android tablets combined command 33% of the market, nothing to sneeze at, right? Wrong! This 33% is mostly made up of the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and a variety of $100 and $200 tablets, most will never run Android 4.0 and in the case of the Fire and Nook are forks of Android that Google earns nothing from. Few vendors barely crossed the 1Million units mark, most of them didn't. Usually, I use Amazon.com hourly sales to gauge the success of a product in the market only because Amazon.com is one of the few (only?) sellers that provide such a detailed breakdown of sales. With tablets however you really can't clearly gauge the market since Amazon.com doesn't sell the iPad nor the Nook. With that in mind and knowing that the iPad command about 60% of the market, we examine Amazon.com's hourly sales.

First, we look at the tablet best sellers. The Kindle Fire is an obvious leader followed by the Coby Kyros and ASUS Transformer Prime. I've been following the hourly sales for a while, the latter two exchanged places back and forth but Kindle Fire remained supreme since hitting Amazon.com's virtual shelves. You might think ASUS is doing great, it is 2nd or 3rd after the Kindle Fire, but you'd be wrong!

Next, we examine the parent category, the best sellers in computers and accessories. Kindle Fire remains the best seller here, the Coby Kyros is at number 10 and the ASUS Transformer Prime is at number 12. The Apple TV at number 3 outsells both by a huge margin. Yes, Apple's hobby, the Apple TV outsells the best selling Android tablets. It gets worse.

The Kindle Fire remains the best seller in all electronics that Amazon.com sells. The Apple TV is at number 9. Where do the leading Android tablets fall on the top 100 electronics? They don't! The Apple Airport Extreme at 71 sells more than any Android tablet does on Amazon.com.

ASUS, Motorola and Samsung, to name a few. Mistakenly assumed that there was a tablet craze, like a smartphone craze but the truth is, people want the iPad. People are choosing the iPad, not over other tablets, but over netbooks. Tablets existed for 10 years and no one cared about them until the iPad. This is not a new market that Apple has created but a hit that people want. They assumed they could just copy the iPad, as they did with the iPhone and people will flock towards them, which obviously didn't happen in 2011. Samsung, the biggest of the Android cartels in 2011 -partly due to selling 5 different Android tablets- is at 5.6% and this won't be getting better. In fact, by the hourly sales on Amazon.com they seem to be falling further behind, as ASUS seems to be positioning itself as the sales leader among high-end Android tablets.

In 2012 it will only get worse for ASUS, Motorola and Samsung, among others. The tablet market, unlike the smartphone market, seems to have clearly divided itself between those who want an iPad and those who don't and the majority of those who don't are opting for no-name cheap $100 Android tablets and now with the advent of the Kindle Fire and Nook, it seems those two, carrying brand recognition will become the default Android tablets that happen to not run Google-sanctioned Android. The Kindle Fire and Nook are the unexpected Android-killers.