Android Beats iOS As the Top Tablet OS

sfcrazy writes "Linux is on a roll. After conquering the smartphone space, Android is now dominating the tablet space. According to a new study by Gartner, 'the tablet growth in 2013 was fueled by the low-end smaller screen tablet market, and first time buyers; this led Android to become the No. 1 tablet operating system (OS), with 62 percent of the market.'" Also, everyone is buying tablets.(~200 million sold in 2013 vs ~115 million in 2012). Microsoft still only has 2% of the tablet market.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what, it took Apple to even do it right the first time. After all those Palm devices and Windows CE devices were just a bunch of low-battery-life devices that forgot their memory when they ran out of power.

Look OSS and Android guys, it doesn't matter how many how many of the devices are being shipped if all the money is being made on the more developer-friendly iOS ecosystem. If you want people to develop for Android, update Android consistently so that all devices have the same features, and quit letting vaporware and shovelware dominate the marketplace.

ANDROID != LINUX

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Don't believe.

There is NO Posix userspace on Android.
Posix kernel land is locked/limited.

Why does it take 16 GB RAM to compile the Android tarball? That's some BEAUTIFUL community inclusion!

Re:The year of the Linux Tablet

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

"premiere tablet platform"?

Biased much?

Re:Questionable Numbers

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I have such fond memories of when this site wasn't such a blatant tool of spin doctors for certain industry interests...

Meh. Slashdot stories have long reported Gartner's dodgy numbers at face value, even though pretty much every single such story contains multiple comments pointing out how absurd those numbers are.

Re:And yet apple sells more tablets than anybody

[amiga3D]

What are you smoking? Those shitty tablets have one thing in common and that is a shitty screen. The touch screen is by far the most important part of the tablet experience and a shitty screen makes for one bad experience. That's the first thing I noticed when I picked up the Samsung Galaxy tablet. A screen to rival the iPad. That was the beginning of actual competition. Before that it didn't exist. I see those crap tablets on Craigslist all the time at giveaway prices.

Re:So what?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Samsung dominates Android tablet sales. ASUS, Amazon, and Lenovo are the next 3 leading brands of Android tablets (combined they are about half the Android tablet space - meaning on-par with Apple in total tablet sales). None of them sell low-end/cheap tablets. It's not price that is driving people to Android tablets - it is their familiarity with Android via their cell phones. Android dominates cell phones; it is only natural that people used to Android on their phone would look to use the same platform for their tablet.

Re:Questionable Numbers

[swillden]

Meh. Even if you're right it doesn't matter, because while the details of the current positions may be fuzzy, the trend is crystal clear.

Re:The year of the Linux Tablet

[DJRumpy]

They do this every time. Gartner left out almost 4 million Apple sales. Those were actual sales, rather than 'shipped'. This happens every time, and we always find out later that Shipped from folks like Samsung != Sales from Apple.

Apple reports Sales. The others do not.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/03/03/gartner-ignores-apples-sales-numbers-reports-android-marketshare-doubled-ipad-in-2013 [appleinsider.com]

Re: The year of the Linux Tablet

[kthreadd]

Too bad almost no one uses AOSP, but relies on the Google Play services which are non-free. Almost like saying that OS X is open because Darwin is.

Re:ANDROID != LINUX

[marcello_dl]

Gentlemen, to clear up the terminology confusion, I suggest to:
- call the kernel "Linux"
- call the kernel + GNU userland GNU/Linux
- call the linux based Google's operating system Android/Linux

The reason nobody else came up with this classification before is beyond me.