Thursday, July 28, 2011

Motorola Expected To Ship 1.3 to 1.5 Million Xooms Through the Rest Of the Year; How Will The Tablet Market Shape Up?

Feeling a bit numbed after looking at Motorola's numbers, this is worse than what I felt after seeing RIM's own quarterly result.  Now, Moto is saying it'll ship at most 1.5 million Xooms.

What more can I expect?  As a mobile fan, I had high hopes that Motorola can stage a comeback in 2011 like they did when they fell but came back with the RAZr phones.  

So, if this is how the flagship Android tablet is doing, you have to wonder just how other Android tablets can do up against the iPad, Playbook, and Touchpad.  

Doing some quick math and estimation here, I see the follow breakdown of the tablet market:

  • RIM can possibly ship up to 1 million Playbooks a month
  • HP can possibly ship  up to 500K Touchpads a month
  • Samsung can possibly ship up to 2 million Galaxy Tablets a month
  • Other Android tablet makers can ship up to 1 million tablets a month
  • Apple can ship up to 5 million iPads a month
Take some liberty with the figures, this is how I see the tablet market break down once all the dust has been settled.  The figures I've provided are based on monthly sales:

  •  Apple 7.50M 53.57% 
  •  Galaxy 2.00M 14.29% 
  •  Playbook              1.00M 7.14%
  • Touchpad              0.50M 3.57% 
  •  Other Androids       1.50M 10.71%  
  •  Others               1.50M 10.71% 
As you can see, based on the interest levels in tablets other than iPads, I've given Apple more than half of the tablet market based on some estimates I've been able to get from the Web for the next couple of years.  Maybe I've given some of the tablets more or less figure than they deserve.  And certainly, Apple numbers are probably too low (sorry, Apple fans).  

And yes, I've left out Microsoft.  Simply put, given what we see with Windows Phone sales right now, there just isn't not that interest in Microsoft's mobile OS.  While Nokia's entry into the market later this year could change that, an increase sales of Windows Phone devices does not translate into interests for Windows tablets.

Also, I based my figures on the 50-60 million tablets estimated to be sold next year.  My figure came in around the mid-point of that range.  As for the individual breakdowns, those are only my guess based on the most updated quarterly information on the Web.  Also, I purposely left about 10% for "others".  

I think my forecasts are pretty conservative when it comes to iPad sales.  In one recent report, Informa doesn't have Android challenging the iPad for market share until 2015 (MacdailyNews). This new estimate is considered a push-back from other estimates I've seen earlier that put 2013 when Android tablet volume will surpassed iPad sales.

I guess what I'm saying here is that until Google and its partners really push hard Android tablets or another platform has a breakthrough, even conservative estimates like mine has the iPad with a large share of the market.

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