While Apple begins to deliver the new iPad mini to new buyers, today we read the IDC report on worldwide tablet shipments that has Apple dominating the tablet market. Apple’s share did decline from 59.7 percent to 50.4 percent, but the firm did see growth of 26.1 percent in shipments year on year.

The share loss for Apple was picked up primarily by Samsung, Amazon, and Asus. It seems the Asus manufactured Google Nexus 7 helped quite a bit as they saw a 252.9% growth in shipments over the last year.

Samsung is now clearly in second place with 18.4 percent of the market, thanks to a 325 percent growth in shipments on the previous year. This is a huge increase. With the new Note 10.1 and Google’s Nexus 10, both developed by Samsung, this figure is likely to continue to grow. Apple’s iPad mini received on the whole good reviews and the lower price point should get more people into the tablet market, so it will be interesting to see how Apple fares at the end of the current fourth quarter and fiscal year.

The entire tablet market grew 49.5 percent over the last year and it seems that more and more people are starting to find a place for a tablet in their lives.

Microsoft recently launched their Surface RT a few weeks ago too, with Windows 8 tablets arriving shortly. We will have keep an eye on the impact to the tablet market in future reports. Also, Amazon has more Kindle HD devices launching soon, and with their Kindle Fire HD priced very competitively I imagine we will see significant growth in the overall tablet market thanks to the upcoming holiday season.

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