Google's Android has been a major competitor in the smartphone industry, but it hasn't quite been that successful in terms of tablets. That being said, a new research conducted by Informa suggests that Android tablets could overtake iPad sales by 2016, which is another 5 years from now.
Apple currently holds about 75%, but the research claims that company's dominance in the tablet market will see a huge fall and will end up at a mere 39%. The theory seems very well worked and we cannot disregard the possibility of this happening sooner than 2015. Apple doesn't have an array of tablets to brag about with the iPad 2 currently being the single and the flagship tablet of the company. We have always stressed on the fact that the head-start that the iPad maker got with the competitive tablet market has been very alarming for the likes of Google, and hence it became necessary to bring out the Honeycomb platform.
The Galaxy Tab, which initially came with Froyo, is the best selling Android tablet to date and that's mainly due to the fact that there weren't any (Android) competitors to the tablet at the time of the launch. However, today with Google's Honeycomb update, the Android scene has opened up considerably. That being said, even with the platform's arrival early this year, there haven't been many Android 3.x tablets.
David McQueen, who is an analyst, said, "From 2013, as cheaper and more advanced Android tablets enter the market, we forecast that sales will pick up considerably, eventually surpassing iPad sales in 2016". He further added, "We have seen a huge explosion in the tablet market in recent years, driven primarily by the iPad, and we estimate that the market will go from strength to strength, growing from under 20 million tablets sold in 2010, to over 230 million in 2015". Given Android's open source nature, it isn't quite hard to make these speculations. The slow roll out of iPads could benefit Honeycomb and ultimately Google.