The first quarter of 2012 numbers are in, and they show a lot of strength for the tablet market.
As is to be expected, Apple was the leading manufacturer of tablets sold during the first three months of the year, capturing 62.8% of the market.
Of course, the new iPad launched in the first quarter of 2012 so that certainly helped spur sales. But even without that factor, numbers probably would have been up across the board.
In total, there was a 124% growth in the tablet market, but the iPad was the largest part of that. The iPad’s sales numbers were up 162%.
These numbers are from respected research group NPD, which broke down tablet sales by manufacturer as opposed to operating system or individual device.
As a result, Samsung came in second place. Its 1.6 million Android tablets sold in the first quarter gave it a 7.5% market share. That encompasses a wide variety of Galaxy Tab products.
Amazon came in third, with 900,000 tablets sold and accounting for 4% of the market. That is pretty respectable considering Q1 2012 is the first full quarter that Amazon has been in the tablet market, and also considering that Amazon has only one tablet product so all of those sales are attributed to just one device.
Rounding out the list, Research in Motion actually came in fourth place with 500,000 Blackberry Playbooks sold – spurred by price drops and promotions – giving it 2.3% of the market. ASUS came in fifth, though when rounding the numbers it sold the same amount of units as RIM.
