Apple iPad Market Dominance Kills Android Competition
A new report from the Digitimes suggests the onging dominance of Apple's iPad series has forced a number of PC vendors, including Dell, Acer and Asuteck plan to bow-out of the tablet market. REUTERS

A new report from the Digitimes suggests the onging dominance of Apple's iPad series has forced a number of PC vendors, including Dell, Acer and Asustek to bow-out of the tablet market.

The news was first reported by The Digitimes. In its report The Digitimes suggested that "sources from upstream supply chain" had confirmed that the move was born from the companies' inability to match the "content support" offered by Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The site's unnamed industry source went on to report that the Apple and Amazon's strong "content" -- app -- offering meant that in the future it was likely the majority of tablets' revenue would come from software, rather than hardware sales. According to The Digitimes "the sources believe these hardware devices will eventually be offered for free."

Though The Digitimes' source is questionable, aside from the theory Apple and Amazon would offer tablets for free, the site's report corresponds to numerous research firms' previous findings.

Most recently a paper by ABI Research suggested that sales of Apple iPads accounted for 68 per cent of all tablets sold.

In its paper the research firm went on to report that in the summer period of 2011 roughly 13.6 million tablets had been sold worldwide. The statistic dwarfed the meagre 7.3 million Netbooks sales reported by ABI Research.

The research's findings ran in tandem with the findings of numerous other research groups including IDC and ComScore.

All the research firms papers' issued similar reports suggesting the Apple's iPad series was dominating the tablet market. The papers also indicated a belief that the trend would continue through 2012, citing high consumer interest in Apple's currently unconfirmed iPad 3.