Glut of Android Tablets Floods Market, Drives Prices Down (ContributorNetwork)

Remember in January, when it looked like the Samsung Galaxy Tab -- the original 7-inch one -- had sold more than 2 million tablets?

Well, we now know that wasn't the case. And whether the actual sales were "quite small" or "quite smooth," way more Galaxy Tabs ended up in stores than were actually bought. The reason for the confusion, see, was because people mixed up unit shipments -- the tablets that shipped from Samsung to the stores -- with unit sales, or the tablets that actually sold in the stores.

But we'd never do that again. Right?

History repeats itself

I admit, I got a bit mixed up myself in an earlier article. I saw something that said that Android had taken a third of the worldwide tablet market, and I got all excited and ran with it.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, however, crunched the numbers and figured out that, surprise, it was unit shipments all over again. And the actual Android tablet market share is exactly as bad as you'd think it is, to look at the people around you who have iPads.

(In my defense, Android tablets are more common in my social group. Although I suppose that says something about my social group.)

How bad is Android tablet market share?

Well, according to Gruber, from the stats that Apple's released it's sold almost 30 million iPads of both models. As for Android tablets, individual tablet manufacturers haven't released statistics (except for Samsung's "quite smooth" sales figures), but Robert Synnott suggested a way to estimate: Take Google's statistics for active Android devices, then multiply by the percentage that runs Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android.

Obviously, this method won't work as well later this year, when both Android smartphones and tablets run Ice Cream Sandwich. And it fails to take into account the Android tablets that run earlier versions of Android, like the HTC Flyer and (again) the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. But even if all 2 million Galaxy Tabs are added in, the numbers are bleak: 0.9 percent of all Android devices run Honeycomb, so that means there are probably fewer than 3 million active Android tablets total.

Fortunately, Google's loss is your gain.

Clearance prices on tablets

Obviously, not very many people want these new Android tablets, or at least not as many as are being made. The Asus Transformer sold out its first shipment, but that's probably more due to its price tag than anything else -- $100 less than a new iPad 2. And it doesn't help that the iPad 2 is still hard to find in some places.

Perhaps because of these sluggish sales rates, the Android blogs that I follow announce a new sale or coupon seemingly every week. The most recent is good for $100 off any Android tablet at Staples, besides the Nook Color. Not too long ago the Motorola Xoom had an apparently-permanent price drop to $500, and the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab has already hit the bargain basement.

If you have your heart set on an iPad 2, sales on Android tablets aren't going to help you get one. But if you've been wanting an Android tablet, it's definitely a buyer's market.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110723/us_ac/8852633_glut_of_android_tablets_floods_market_drives_prices_down

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