Despite a rising tide that will see Apple sell almost 170 million iPads in 2016, Gartner believes the firm's hold on the tablet market will start to slip in the years ahead.

According to the latest report published by the organisation, Apple is set to sell around 73 million iPads throughout the course of 2012, representing 61 percent of the 118 million tablets consumers will pick up as a whole.

But Android's growing base and the launch of Windows 8 devices will, eventually, eat into Apple's hold claims Gartner, resulting in iPad's market share slipping to 46 percent by 2016.

An eye on iPad

Nonetheless, such a tally will still see Apple doubling its iPad sales over the course of the next five years, and in general represents a positive revision of Gartner's estimates based on projected figures the firm published back in September.



"Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," said research VP at Gartner Carolina Milanesi.

"As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world.

"The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat."

Trading places

Interestingly, though  unlikely to challenge iPad, Gartner believes Windows 8 tablets will sweep the BlackBerry PlayBook aside before the end of the year - that's despite Microsoft's platform not launching until late 2012.

In all, Gartner believes around 4.9 million Windows 8 tablets will be sold during the calendar year - that's almost twice the number of PlayBooks the firm believes RIM will sell throughout the course of all 12 months. 

The real kick in the teeth for RIM, however, is the fact that Gartner predicts Microsoft will make these gains in the business sector – an area where the Canadian giant was traditionally dominant in the smartphone market.

"IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers," added Milanesi.

"This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal."

In all, worldwide tablet sales will hit 118.9 million units in 2012 according to Gartner - a 98 percent increase from 2011's tally of 60 million units sold.

[source: Gartner]