It is interesting to note from the comScore report that Google has stolen market-share from both RIM and Microsoft, whereas Apple is almost steady over the past 3 months. In the content category, the apps, the browsers, and social networks are the winners in terms of growth. Text messaging also grew, showing that the US market, at least, is not yet saturated with SMS like other global markets.
These mobile trends may be good predictors of the xPad market as well, since the ecosystem for mobile smart phones and pads are very similar. Much of the same apps and technologies used on the smart phones are at play for pad devices (yes, there are even free SMS messaging apps, and let's not forget Skype for making phone calls). HP will try to resurrect Palm in the Pad market with their Hurricane pad (if it's still called that?). The data predicts an uphill battle for RIM and HP, with Microsoft playing as an hitherto unknown entity. So far, Google and Apple are the winners. Maybe Google has a leg-up in that their software (Android) is used by many hardware manufacturers, whereas Apple has the first mover advantage. Two players may be an optimal steady-state configuration for this market? I hope the game-theorists can weigh in on this!
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