According to the New York-based marketing research firm, ABI Research, the global tablet sales will touch the 100 million mark at the end of 2012.
ABI says that between April and June 2012, about 25 million tablet units were shipped globally. The number of units shipped has increased by almost 36 per cent from the previous quarter of April-June, 2011.
Of the total tablet shipped in the first quarter of 2012 Apple?s iPad accounted for 69 per cent. Compared to the total worldwide shipment of 17.3 million Apple iPad in 2011, in the first quarter of 2012 about 17 million Apple iPad have been shipped.
Trailing Apple in the second place is South-Korea based Samsung, which has eight per cent of the global market share in the tablets space. It is followed by Amazon and Asus.
The report estimates that with more launches from Google and Microsoft, the tablet market is going to see more competition. The research firm notes that most tablets operate as Wi-Fi devices. Of the total tablet shipments in the first half of 2012, less than 27 per cent included a mobile broadband modem module, thereby resulting in a decline of 12 per cent in such devices in 2011.
