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Windows Tablet Sales Finally Being Tracked, Not in Last Place

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After years of no one caring, people are actually paying attention to how many tablets are being sold and which operating systems they’re running. That alone would be the best news I’ve read all day, but it gets better: Windows tablets are not in last place! Thanks, RIM!

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not fair to bag on RIM like that. Their BlackBerry Playbook is brand spanking new while Microsoft has been trying to make a go of Tablet PCs for the past ten years. But still, if you could afford me this one “we don’t totally suck moment,” I would appreciate it.

Now then, the company claiming the numbers is Strategy Analytics, whose services include, I’m guessing, strategy and analytics (their About Us page probably offers more detail). According to their estimates, in the second quarter of this year, 15.1M tablets shipped. Of those, 9.3M were iPads, 4.6M were tablets from various vendors running Android, 0.7M were running a Microsoft OS (presumably Windows), followed by QNX on the BlackBerry Playbook, and then whatever else. Table below.

As some of you may be able to prove with receipts or invoices, more than zero tablets running Windows shipped in Q2 of last year, but nobody was tracking them. Hence, that number is 0.0. This goes back to my initial point of glee over finally having numbers on Windows-based tablet sales. I’d been coming up empty trying to find these for the past few years. Now it looks like they’ll be tracked quarterly. Thanks to the iPad. (Just a little more bitter than sweet in this bittersweet moment.)

Via ZDNet

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    07/21/2011 at 7:37 pm

    Definitely good news, but to keep it in perspective: shipped doesn’t equal sold, except for Apple’s case AFAIK. Meaning: of the 700,000 Windows tablets reported, we really don’t know how many are sold and how many are sitting on store shelves or in warehouses. I’d love to see actual sales numbers to get a clearer picture.

    • Sumocat

      07/21/2011 at 8:04 pm

      Yes, of course that’s correct. In my drunken excitement over having any numbers, I forgot to make that distinction. Thanks.

    • Cuhulin

      07/21/2011 at 8:05 pm

      That would certainly be the same for Android and QNX, as well.  When new tablets are introduced, the sales channel receives a large number so that stores and internet sites can have inventory to sell. 

      Sales numbers would be far more interesting.

    • ChrisRS

      07/21/2011 at 10:26 pm

      The only two models I have cared about or followed,have been the HP 500 and the Asus EP121. From the lack of availabilty and constant out of stock status, I suspect that there are not a lot sitting in inventory

      For the touch only, netbook class tablets, it may be a different story.

      Contrary to the iOS, Android and QNX tablets, there are at least least two levels of Windows Tablets. The low power more consumption oriented (Touch only, netbook/atom calss) and the highrer powered cration oriented full TabletPC class slates and convertables with active digitizers and more robust processors. It makes comparison difficult.

      The TabletPC class computers were shipping long before iPads. It certainly seems that they should have been tracked. Since this class computer is out of the consumer main stream, are they included even included in  the numbers sited by this report?

      WIth regard to RIM: The one newly released BB device has shipments of approximalty 75% of the total of the several Windows devices that have been on the market longer. Nothing to be ashamed of RIM! Nothing to be proud of Windows.

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