There are two issues for discussion. One is the likelihood that Apple will maintain its dominance in the sector with its product, the iPad. Its competition is not Android, but various manufacturers who will use Android, modify Android (as Amazon did), a variation on Windows, and other operating systems. While one may discuss the sector as contention between three operating system, in fact that competition is between Microsoft and Google, battling over manufacturers. Microsoft gets money when the manufacturer chooses it, and gets money when Android is selected because most manufacturers have, so far, said let's get the checkbook out when Microsoft's attorneys have had their tete a tete with them.

Google gets money as more information being exchanged between parties leads to better advertising results. In theory. (30 years of solicitation calls wherein they know everything down to the toothpaste I use, and they haven't noticed that I always say no.) Look at that, these days Google even makes money if people buy iPhones.

Long term prospect: others will make tablets and get adequate and perhaps superior market share.

Now the other point is whether Apple's iPad2 the best of all possible iPads. The answer is obviously no, and as people figure out what matters about what Apple is doing, they will produce good and arguably better products and then it comes down to inside MBAseball regarding sales channels and platforms and supply chains and pricing. (Dare we say that other than lowering their profits, Microsoft and Google don't have a whole lot of latitude there, nor want to care, because that's the manufacturer's problem and they are in the software licensing and advertising businesses, respectively.) Fellow venerable Apple fans such as I have had to understand why the 1984 Mac didn't mop the floor vis a vis DOS running on AT's. I have empathy for Microsoft fans who are troubled by the Zune's story.

I'm seeing where Apple just put a big stake in the ground that says they want their iPad to be the educational device. They even provided a sales channel and creation infrastructure. Some of the people I listen to imply that a 16:9 ratio is great for movies but awful for textbooks. If Apple's threat is real, then Microsoft, Google, the manufacturers, and Amazon would all have to coordinate on tools, aspect ratios (do you choose to be this or that, you can't be both), hardware, and channels as well. Amazon will make their own Text Kindle and not touch tools. Microsoft will write up minimum hardware specs, write tools (there might be a market there), and will do nothing about the channel. Google will let the community write the tools, do nothing about the channel, and ask Samsung to make a proof-of-implementation Android Text Tablet. Manufacturers gravitate to where the paying customers are. They may pass on the education market in all but a pro forma manner.

I could be wrong, but the real point I would like to make is that market share expressed as families of operating systems isn't the picture that matters.

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/android-tablet-market-share-up-10-ipad-down-10-through-2011/5430