Piper Jaffray predicts Apple will sell 13 million iPads by the end of this year, when it’s expected to hold 89 percent of the global tablet market. However, the investment firm expects the iPad’s market share to decline as competitors enter the market next year, even though the firm’s model shows Apple shipping 23.3 million units in 2011.
“We estimate this share will drop to 53 percent in 2011 with more competition from Android garnering a 33 percent share on 14.4 million unit shipments,” Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster, Michael Olson, and Andrew Murphy wrote in a report Thursday. In addition, the analysts expect the new PlayBook tablet from Research In Motion to grab market share next year.
“The PlayBook is separate from the 33 percent Android market share,” Murphy noted in an e-mail. “I didn’t mention it in the report, because our survey was only iPad versus Android, but we estimate that RIM will have about five percent market share — selling about two million PlayBooks in 2011.”
A Strong Consumer Preference
Despite facing new competition from rival Samsung, Apple’s iPad continues to dominate consumer preferences in the tablet space it created. In a small survey of 65 consumers conducted by Piper Jaffray recently, 85 percent expressed a preference for the iPad versus 15 percent for Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab.
However, respondents perceived the value of both devices at levels that were considerably less than their suggested retail prices. Though the iPad 3G is priced at $629, the average perceived value was only $417. Moreover, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab was only valued at $283 versus the device’s suggested retail price of $599.
Overall, the survey results indicate that Apple continues to dominate the web tablet space it pioneered with the iPad. “While we expect both the iPad and Android tablet platforms to find success…