iPad 3 Release Date: Apple's Domination of Tablet Market Indicates 2012 Launch

By CP News Briefs, Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Apple’s iPad has dominated the tablet market in the United States and Canada from April to July this year. According to research group Strategy Analytics, an amazing 6 million of the 7.5 million tablets shipped in North America were iPads.

However, Amazon’s own tablet which will be revealed this week, possibly on Wednesday, is expected to rival the iPad.

"Apple remains a long way ahead of its main rivals such as Motorola, Samsung, RIM, Asus and HTC,” said senior analyst Alex Spektor of Strategy Analytics, according to the BBC.

"A combination of cool branding, user-friendly hardware, entertaining services and savvy retail distribution has made Apple a formidable market leader."

Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics has also said, "Provided the pricing, screen size and hardware design are right, Amazon can be one of the main challengers to Apple's dominance."

He went on to say: "Like Apple, Amazon has a strong brand, compelling content, sophisticated billing systems and widespread distribution.”

He concluded: "In effect, Amazon's new tablet product represents a good opportunity to place an Amazon shopping cart in the hands of American consumers, offering optimized access to purchasing digital content or physical goods from the Amazon online store."

With the dominance of Apple’s iPad 2, analysts are saying that the company will be in no rush to put out the iPad 3, and that it definitely will not be out until 2012.