Friday, December 7, 2012

AAPL: iPad Downloads Soar, Says ABI; Will ‘Sandwich’ Close Gap?

Research firm ABI Research today reports that users of Apple’s (AAPL) iPad have downloaded apps for the device�3 billion times the introduction of the first model in April of 2010, which the firm says is a faster adoption rate than was the case for the iPhone with respect to apps.

ABI compares the year-and-a-half the iPad has taken to achieve that milestone, versus two years for the iPhone. However, the article doesn’t note that the iPhone did not gain the ability to run apps at all until 2008, over six months after it first hit the market.

In any event, the report notes that users of tablet computers based on Google’s (GOOG) “Android” operating system have downloaded only 440 million applications, by its count.

ABI’s Dan Shey credits greater quality of the iPad as prompting a greater rate of downloads — though I would assume that it also has something to do with there being a greater number of iPads in people’s hands�

But Shey and company conclude that Android will get more traction with the newest implementation:

However, things are expected to change as manufacturers adopt the recently-released Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as accelerate product development to close up the specifications gap between their tablets, such as the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire and the iPad.

I’m not completely sure of the methodology used by ABI to compile their totals and their forecasts. I have a call in to the firm to try and clarify.

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