Despite dominating both the mobile device market, Apple seems to be falling out of favour with UK tablet users

Apple are still winning the race, by some distance, but their lead is dropping. Android tablets are rapidly gaining ground on iPads and Mircosoft is putting up a challenge too.

Global shipments of tablets during the first quarter of the year reached a record of 40.6 million units, that’s up a whopping 117% from the first quarter of 2012! Amongst them was 19.5 million iPads (a mix of full-sized and Minis), which gave Apple a leading position with 48.2% of the tablet market.

However that number is down markedly, Apple held 63.1% share of the tablet market just a year ago. Most of the 15% drop was taken by Android tablets, but some also went to Windows-based tablets.

Android now control 43.4% of the tablet market, just a year ago that figure was only 34.2%. Perhaps even more impressive though is Microsoft’s entry into the market. The introduction of the Surface and Surface Pro have had a noticeable effect. Just a year ago Microsoft contributed nothing to tablet sales, now they’ve managed to corner 7.5% of the tablet market with shipments of about 3 million units in the first three months of 2013.

This is certainly an interesting shift from a mobile app development point of view. Generally it’s the case that brands and app makers produce iPhone apps first and foremost and once certain they’ve got it right, branch out to Android and then perhaps Windows apps.

The change in market-share is currently something that need not worry anyone, but it is likely to be a consideration in the future. Segmenting customers by their operating system or establishing which the majority of your customers use most frequently could have an impact on where you choose to trial new apps or even devote more spend.