Android’s rise presents a threat to Apple within the long run and hurts Microsoft at this time.

Since its introduction in 2010, Apple’s iPad has dominated the tablet market, a market that it remade in its own image. But sales of tablets running Google’s Android operating system have now outpaced tablets running Apple’s iOS.

Globally, Android tablet sales in 2013 reached almost 121 million, up from 53 million in 2012, a rise of 127%, consistent with IT research firm Gartner. Sales of Apple’s iPad and iPad Mini came to 70 million in this period, a rise of 36%. That’s just over half the final tablet market growth rate of 68%. Apple’s iPad isn’t always maintaining with the pace of the market.

At the top of 2013, Android tablet sales accounted for 62% of the market, while iOS tablets represented 36%.

Apple, however, remains the leading tablet maker. It sold over 70 million tablets in 2013, almost twice as many because the second largest tablet maker, Samsung.

Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, characterized 2013 because the year tablets went mainstream by being affordable and functional. Cozza, in an announcement, stressed that tablet vendors should specialize in creating value in an effort to combat commoditization.

There’s a 3rd tablet operating system, though relatively few people use it at the present: Microsoft sold greater than twice as many Windows 8 tablets in 2013 than it did in 2012, but its tablets account for just 2% of the entire market. Although Microsoft continues to enhance Windows 8, most recently with the discharge of Windows 8.1, Cozza argued that Microsoft must do more to make its ecosystem compelling to consumers. a brand new CEO is a start.

Though the Android tide has broken Apple’s dominance, Apple remains a force to be reckoned with, particularly among businesses. During Apple’s recent fourth quarter of 2013 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook highlighted enterprise acceptance of the iPad. He said, “90% of tablet activations in corporations are iPads, and 95% of total app activations were all in iOS, and that i think that’s a giant measure of ultimately how sticky the goods are since you can get lots productivity out of an iPad and an iPhone.”

These figures concur with, and will originate from, Google Technology’s Mobility Index Report Q4 2013, which notes that “iOS continues to have a stronghold on tablet use throughout the enterprise, recording 91.4% of total tablet activations in Q4.”

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Cook has emphasized that Apple remains concentrated on product quality in place of quantity. The corporate is additionally fascinated with profit margins, something few mobile hardware makers have, in addition to Apple and Samsung.

Android’s rise presents a threat to Apple within the long run, but its immediate impact could also be to wring the complete potential cash in on the business of marketing mobile operating systems in order that Microsoft’s mobile products can’t take root. Because it happens, the eu Commission is investigating that charge. Apple, meanwhile, remains protected within its walled garden, for now in any case.

Too many companies treat digital and mobile strategies as pet projects. Listed below are four ideas to shake up your organization. Also within the Digital Disruption issue of InformationWeek: Six enduring truths about selecting enterprise software. (Free registration required.)

Thomas Claburn was writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications which include New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio

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