iPad userbase 138 million by 2015, Android tablets 113 million reckons Gartner

Gartner's projections for the tablet market rest on one crucial assessment: that iPad's rise is tracking largely in line with the pace set by iPhone.

But not only do these projections suggest that iPad's userbase will hit 138 million by 2015, Gartner also believes Apple's competitors are making the same mistakes with their tablets as they have with their smartphones.

Gartner states Android will have a cumulative tablet base of 113 million by 2015 – mopping up 38.6 percent of the market in the process – OEMs are far too focused on the specs of their respective hardware.

"Many [competitors] are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritising hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience," said Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi.

"Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realise that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple."

Gartner believes users are after a consistent user experience from smartphones to tablets, and the stability of iOS will encourage existing iPhone owners to plump for iPad, rather than one of its rivals.

Though its share will steadily drop form just under 84 percent in 2010 to just over 47 percent in 2015, Apple's dominance over the course of the next five years will translate to it selling around almost 25 million units a year.

In comparison, Android tablets are predicted to collectively sell 22.2 million units a year.

"Smartphone users will want to buy a tablet that runs the same operating system as their smartphone. This is so that they can share applications across devices as well as for the sense of familiarity the user interfaces will bring," added Milanesi.

"Vendors developing on Android should be prepared to see more cross brand ownership as some users might put OS over brand when it comes to the purchasing decision. Improvements on usability and brand recognition are the strongest differentiators they can focus on."

BlackBerry's PlayBook and HP's TouchPad will be smaller players, though RIM will begin to gain momentum from 2012 onwards, holding 10 percent of the market by 2015.

"It will take time and significant effort for RIM to attract developers and deliver a compelling ecosystem of applications and services around QNX to position it as a viable alternative to Apple or Android," said Milanesi.

"This will limit RIM’s market share growth over the forecast period. It will be mainly organisations that will be interested in RIM’s tablets because they either already have RIM’s infrastructure deployed or have stringent security requirements."

Gartner's numbers have already garnered a response from the development community.

In reply middleware company Ideaworks CEO Niall Murphy has claimed the firm's numbers raise three points.

Firstly, the significant expansion of the tablet market as a whole will pull in more and more developers, though the split between iOS and Android will mean working on apps that do justice to both platforms will represent a significant challenge.

Murphy has also agreed that it's software, not hardware, that will have the greatest bearing on the performance of tablets at the tills.

"Gartner's report brings in to sharp relief how important it is for OEMs and challenger OS providers to make their devices and platforms as 'open' as possible for developers," he said.

In conclusion, however, he has noted that no-one should take Garnter's figures as gospel.

"Five years ago neither iOS nor the concept of a tablet existed," he stated.

"As the ecosystems surrounding Android, WebOS, MeeGo and QNX mature, combined with falling hardware costs, there are lots of reasons for uncertainty in the dominance of particular operating systems in individual geographic or application vertical markets."

[source: Gartner]