iPad Represented 80 Percent of North American Tablet Shipments in Q2

According to research from Strategy Analytics released earlier this week, the iPad captured 80 percent share of tablet shipments in North America during the second quarter of 2011. The research firm claims that Apple has a tight grip on the American tablet market that companies like Amazon will find hard to break.

"Apple completely dominates the North American tablet market, capturing 80 percent share of 7.5 million shipments during Q2 2011," said Alex Spektor, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "Apple remains a long way ahead of its main rivals such as Motorola, Samsung, RIM, Asus and HTC. A combination of cool branding, user-friendly hardware, entertaining services and savvy retail distribution has made Apple a formidable market leader."

"Provided the pricing, screen size and hardware design are right, Amazon can be one of the main challengers to Apple’s dominance," noted Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics. "Like Apple, Amazon has a strong brand, compelling content, sophisticated billing systems and widespread distribution. 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."

The full report, "Global Tablet Vendor Market Share by Region: Q2 2011," is published by the Strategy Analytics Tablet & Touchscreen (TTS) service. You can find out more here.