Tablet shipments are expected to hit high levels for 2012, with Apple's iPad leading the pack.
That's according to new projections concocted by ABI Research, which claims that tablet shipments for 2012 will reach anywhere from 102 to 110 million units – helped out by a record-setting second quarter (measured April to June) that saw almost 25 million tablets shipped.
Just to put that into perspective, the record quarter exceeded shipments the quarter prior by an increase of 36 percent.
Year-to-year, tablet shipments for the period measured April to June were up a total of 77 percent.
So, just how much does the iPad play into the growing tablet picture?
Apple ships all of 2010
According to ABI Research, Apple's iPad took up approximately 69 percent of all shipments for the aforementioned 25-million-unit quarter.
The 17 million iPads shipped represent another noteworthy figure as well – that's the total number of tablets shipped in 2010 for all vendors worldwide.
In other words, Apple's tablet shipments alone – for just a single quarter in 2012 -- could cover the entirety of the market two years ago.
Other companies ranking high on the list included Samsung, which cruised into second place for market share for the second quarter of 2012.
Amazon Amazon and ASUS took third and fourth respectively.
Samsung grew its shipments approximately 8.1 percent between the first and second quarter or 2012, and ASUS jumped up four percent.
RIM took top honors as the company that suffered the largest decrease in tablet shipments quarter-to-quarter, dropping approximately one percent.
ABI Research expects Google's recently launched Nexus 7 to contribute positively to the total tablet shipment figure, but the company neglected to project just exactly how many devices – or what percentage of the total market – Google's going to hit.
Via ABI Research
