iPad is two years old

YEREVAN, January 30. /ARKA/. The iPad turned two years old on Friday. Despite a persistent onslaught of would-be rivals, the Apple tablet still dominates the market, and it doesn’t show any signs of losing momentum any time soon. 

The innovative device was introduced two years ago by Apple founder and CEO, Steve Jobs producing a kind of revolution. Even before the presentation of the first iPad on January 27, 2010, experts and journalists wrote that the new product would be a merge of a smartphone, netbook and reader, RIA Novosti reports.

The innovative device actually created a separate niche at mobile electronics market- a segment of tablet PC. In 2011, according to Strategy Analytics, 66.9 million devices were shipped that was a 260% increase over the previous year. Analysts point out that more and more consumers prefer tablets to personal computers.

In spite of the tablet "boom" of the past two years - Samsung, RIM, Motorola and others are selling their devices as well, but Apple continues to dominate this market. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple sold a record number of 15.43 billion iPad devices, 58% of the market, according to the Strategy Analytics.

Sale of first iPads began in the United States on April 3, 2010. On the first day Apple sold more than 300 thousand pieces. In one month sales reached one million in the U.S. and by the end of 2010, the company managed to sell nearly 15 million devices. 

Second generation iPad devices were introduced in March 2011, for the sake of this presentation, Steve Jobs, who died in October last year, broke off his vacation. In just two years Apple has sold more than 55 million iPad devices of both generations.

Analysts predict that in future the popular tablet will gradually cede market share to competing devices, in particular, to low-cost tablets, like Amazon Kindle Fire. But Apple will be able to partially restore the lost market share due to the third generation iPad, which is expected in the coming months. 

According to unofficial data, the device will have a powerful processor, a high-resolution screen and the support for cellular LTE networks. According to the forecast of Apple CEO, Tim Cook, tablets will sooner or later overtake traditional computers. -0-