Apple iPad continues to dominate in the tablet market

The latest stats from IDC show that in the tablet world, the Apple iPad remains on top and even increased its market share over the past 12 months. As of the the end of the second quarter of this year, Apple's tablet owned 68.2% of the global tablet market up from the 61.5% it owned last year. Apple shipped 17 million tablets for a year-over-year gain of 84.3% The biggest percentage gain in tablet shipments from quarter to quarter came from Samsung, The Korean manufacturer saw its tablet shipments rise by 117.6% from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012.

Among the top five tablet manufacturers, the biggest loser in the second quarter was Acer. Not only did the firm's market share of the global market drop from 4.2% to 1.8%, shipments declined 38.7%. Overall, the number of tablets shipped rose to just shy of 25 million units in the April-June period of this year from about 15 million in 2011. If you remember how to do quick and dirty division, that works out to a 66% rise in the number of tablets shipped.

While there is a huge drop off from Apple's 17 million tablets shipped in the second quarter to runner-up Samsung's 2 million, it represents opportunity for one of the other manufacturer's to cut that gap. Will Amazon be able to make a move with the sequel to the Amazon Kindle Fire, or will it be ASUS, manufacturer of the red hot Google Nexus 7.

source: IDC