Strategy Analytics Sees Windows Tablets Taking ‘Significant Share’ From Android

Though Windows tablets have traveled “a long bumpy road,” 2015 will go down as the year when Microsoft and its partner OEMs finally got tablets “right,” Strategy Analytics said Thursday in a report. Windows tablet shipments jumped 58 percent in the first nine months of 2015, and their “momentum will carry through the holiday season” to reach 22 million shipments for the full year, for a 10 percent share of the total market, the research firm said. Android remains the dominant 2015 share winner with 68 percent, followed by iOS with 22 percent, it said. By 2019, the firm projects iOS will retain a 23 percent share, with Windows growing to 18 percent at the expense of Android, which will fall to 59 percent. “As the enterprise market becomes increasingly open to the wide scale deployment” of tablet platforms, Microsoft “has a key advantage in that its operating systems are found on the vast majority of PC and servers within the enterprise, potentially providing a smoother integration” of tablets “using the Windows OS into the enterprise,” said Peter King, Strategy Analytics research director-tablet and touch-screen strategies service. Most, if not all, major vendors will have high to premium tier Windows tablet offerings by the end of 2016 to address prosumers and enterprises currently served by Microsoft's Surface Pro line. Power, graphics and functionality aside, Windows 10 “provides a stable base from which the ecosystem can grow and we are entering a world” where Windows tablets can take “significant market share” from Android at the low end “and compete head-to-head with iPad in the high and premium segments,” said Senior Analyst Eric Smith.