As reported on Engadget.
By Sharif Sakr
Say what you like about Windows 8, but before it arrived Microsoft’s presence in the tablet sphere was as small as it was stagnant. By the reckoning of number-crunchers at Strategy Analytics, just 400,000 Windows-running slates were shipped globally in Q3 of last year — a figure that was largely unchanged from the year before and which represented just 1.6 percent of the global tablet market. Six months later, now that the Windows-powered Acers, Lenovos and Surfaces of this world have had a chance to get their game on, Microsoft’s share has quadrupled to 7.5 percent, with a total of three million Windows 8 and RT tablets shipped in Q1 2013. That’s still pretty niche, but three million units would have equated to a bigger share were it not for the fact that the overall tablet market also grew over this period, from 25 million to 41 million units — and at least Microsoft can now claim to be a part of that boom. Look past the break for the numerical breakdown.
