The tablet market is still growing worldwide and today a new research report from Gartner predicts that in 2012, we will see sales of tablets reach 119 million units. If that turns out to be true, it will represent a whopping 98 percent increase compared to 2011 where 60 million tablets were sold worldwide.
The report predicts that Apple"s iPad will continue to dominate sales of the tablet market with 61.4 percent of the total market and tablets based on Android will take up 31.9 percent of the market.
Microsoft plans to launch Windows 8 in late 2012 and the company has been hyping up the OS"s Metro interface for touch screen devices, especially tablets. Gartner predicts that Microsoft"s tablet market share will be 4.1 percent in 2012 but will increase to 11.8 percent by 2016.
However, Gartner"s report also predicts that Windows 8 as a tablet OS will be more popular with a particular audience. Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, states:
IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers. This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal.
Both Dell and HP have already announced plans to release business-based Windows 8 tablet devices.