Reports that Android tablets jumped from a 29% share of the tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2010 to a 39% market share in the last quarter of 2011 might be a little off. The fine print on these reports details a comparison between Apple sales and Android shipments. This means every Android tablet sitting on a shelf of a Best Buy or Target or on display at the Verizon store is being counted against iPads that are comfortably resting in someone's home. That's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.
While the sales figures may be off, one aspect of the report is accurate: Android is catching up in the tablet market, thanks to Amazon. Of the 10.5 million Android tablets shipped last quarter, almost half of them were Kindle Fire tablets, with analysts putting Kindle Fire sales in the 4 to 5.5 million range.
Despite Android's growth in market share, the iPad more than doubled its sales from last year, jumping from 7.3 million iPads sold in the last quarter of 2010 to 15.4 million sold in the fourth quarter of 2011. These record-setting sales figures coincided with the much-anticipated release of the "iPad-killing" Kindle Fire.
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