Apple continued to trounce the tablet competition with the iPad in the second quarter, capturing 80 percent of the market, according to stats from Strategy Analytics.
"Apple has a tight grip on the American tablet market that Amazon and others will find hard, but not impossible, to break," the firm said.
Of the 7.5 million tablets that shipped during the second quarter, 80 percent were iPads, well ahead of those from rivals like Motorola, Samsung, RIM, Asus, and HTC.
Why Apple? "A combination of cool branding, user-friendly hardware, entertaining services and savvy retail distribution has made Apple a formidable market leader," said Alex Spektor, a Strategy Analytics senior analyst.
That squares with recent data from Gartner, which said the iPad is expected to make up 73.4 percent of worldwide tablet sales in 2011, though that's down from 83 percent last year. Gartner also predicted that Apple will have more than 50 percent of the market until at least 2014.
One company that might be able to challenge Apple, however, is Amazon. The company sent out invites for a Sept. 28 event that will likely include the launch of its long-awaited tablet.
"Provided the pricing, screen size and hardware design are right, Amazon can be one of the main challengers to Apple's dominance," said 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."
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps had a similar take recently. Amazon has a strong brand-name recognition, cloud services, and the Kindle line, among other things, making it "the only credible iPad competitor in the market," she said.
For more, see the "What the Amazon Tablet Needs to Succeed" slideshow below.