Market Trends in Amazon's Tablet Bestseller List

Richard Fieldhouse (26 September 2011)

[This is an updated version of "Amazon's Top 10 Bestselling Tablets - A Review" - by Nick Thawley (9 Aug. 2011)]

Latest version here

Amazon UK publishes a list of its bestselling tablets and while it can change a little over a period of hours, aggregating the lists over time allows us to see trends that have persisted over the weeks since the market for tablets became large enough to reveal useful information.

The general trends for the market over the last six weeks are reviewed on page two, but first, let's take a look at the top 10 sellers in the Tablet section of its UK store.

Note that this list is as of 22nd September so is subject to change; you can check out the latest best sellers here. This "live" list can be a little confusing with repeated entries for the same and very similar tablets and accessories mixed in with the main tablets category. If you ever feel like checking out the core stats of any of the tablets on this list, click its name and you'll be directed to the relevant tablet comparison table.

10) Blackberry Playbook (down from number 6)

If you're an existing BlackBerry user who is used to the interface, this could be the tablet for you. However, requiring a link to a BlackBerry phone to perform basic functions seems to be restricting demand this tablet, with potential consumers fearing they are being further pushed into a 'walled garden', even more so than Apple iOS users.

The makers (RIM) are losing market share to such an extent that worries over their future could also be damaging sales.

9 (New Entry) Archos 70

This is perhaps the best of the budget tablets. It comes with a capacitive screen and there is also a very popular option that is supplied with a 250Gb hard disk of the old-fashioned spinning variety. This is a genuinely special feature, with most tablets - whatever the price - offering expansion only up to 32 or sometimes 64Gb.

Archos, themselves, are beginning to gain real market traction with quite a range of Android tablets and MP3 players. Their market share in Europe has moved ahead of many better known brands reach 2.5% in 2011 Q2. The company is French, and, whilst their customer support is pretty awful, it does exist - which is more than could be said for a number of the other cheaper "brands".

New Archos tablets are coming shortly with faster processors running Android Honeycomb - and with "G9" added to their names. There's going to be quite a bit of potential for confusion here!

8 (New Entry) Disgo 6000

This indifferent budget offering probably gets a leg up from the fact that the tablet itself can be seen in a number of shops. It really does show the three compromises made in cheaper tablets, with an unresponsive touch screen of the resistive type and poor screen contrast together with a boxy plastic design.

7 (New Entry) Tabtech A816

Another essentially unbranded tablet snaps at the heals of the big boys. This one has access to the Android market and runs the slightly newer Gingerbread version of Android (2.3) on a slightly faster processor than budget tablets usually have. But it does make some of the normal compromises, having a resolution of only 800x600 and using a resistive touch screen which requires a much more positive touch than the capacitive screens used by most full-priced tablets. GPS is also missing.

6) Motorola Xoom 10.1 (Up from number 10)

Motorola partnered with Google to release the Xoom in February this year. It was the first to run Android Honeycomb. However, a number of problems (such as web pages not rendering properly and a non-functional SD card slot) threatened to prevent sales ever taking off.

Many issues have since been fixed by the release of Android Honeycomb 3.1 and more recently 3.2. A number of price reductions have helped move the Xoom up Amazon's bestseller list since last time and people's memories of the teething problems have faded.