How things can change in a year.

For the second quarter of 2011 the iPad’s share of the market dropped to 61.3%, while Android tablets had clawed their way up to claim 30% of tablet sales. You might’ve noticed that, jointly, they claimed 91.3% this year – but 96.9% last year. So where did the rest go? Well, coming in at number three, Windows tablets claimed 4.6%. Yes, Windows tablets. What about RIM’s PlayBook, which launched during the quarter? It managed a measly 3.3%. These figures are according to a study by market research firm Strategy Analytics.

We’ll have to see how they all fair this quarter, and we have a new entrant in the fight, the HP WebOS Touchpad. But the wave of Android tablets also continues to build. The best selling Android tablet, and second best selling tablet overall, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer could’ve sold even more if not for supply issues. Asus seems to have ironed out the issues, and the supply of Transformers has already begun ramping up and will continue to do so. The T-Mobile G-Slate (aka LG Optimus Pad) shipped just before the end of the last quarter. The Toshiba Thrive has just launched.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is slated to launch next month, sliding in between the 7 and 10.1 inch models, giving consumers more choice. Lenovo has just announced the IdeaPad K1, aimed at consumers, and the ThinkPad Tablet, which is aimed more toward business users – right at the RIM PlayBook. The delayed Cisco Cius, also aimed at businesses, will ship at the end of the month. Archos has a couple of models pending, Vizio has their tablet, etc.

The reality seems very different from the impression you’d get reading articles about the tablet market. From the articles you’d think that everyone wants an iPad and no one is buying anything else. Sales of Android tablets have been weak, makers are even considering pulling out of the market, it is all doom and gloom. Android Honeycomb, the first version of Android optimized for tablets, only released in late February with the Motorola Xoom. That’s when the Android tablet market kicked off for real.

Remember how dismissive articles about Android phones were in 2009 – right up until the Motorola Droid hit the streets with Android 2.0? In the year and a half since then which mobile OS has taken the top spot in sales? It’s been less than five months since Honeycomb hit the streets. 30% of the global tablet market. Let’s see what things look like at the end of the year, by which time Ice Cream Sandwich will be out too.

Report figures via Boy Genius Report.

They’ll accomplish this via the release of a car cradle which will hold the 605 against the windshield while incorporating the GPS antenna and receiver as well as TeleAtlas maps of the US and Canada, an RDS receiver for live traffic updates, and an FM transmitted to deliver turn-by-turn directions via the car’s speakers. (They can also come via the 605′s speaker.) It seems like ARCHOS is really trying to make their PMPs into all-purpose gadgets.

Now Archos is adding place-shifting to the TV+. Called ‘TVportation’ it will be a $49.99 software plug-in for the TV+, or free if the TV+ is registered on the ARCHOS web site. ARCHOS claims it will allow streaming of content from the TV+ to the ARCHOS 605 WiFi and ARCHOS 705 WiFi PMPs, as well as PCs, laptops and smartphones. You can also use an ARCHOS 605 WiFi or ARCHOS 705 WiFi as the streaming source, but you need to leave it docked in its base station. (So if you have two you can have one at home as the source and one as the client.) Details on the smartphone support is thin, saying only “compatible with Symbian later this spring”. Though the demo video on the website shows it running on a Windows Mobile Palm Treo.

A little exploring shows they have downloads for Windows Mobile 5 & 6 both Professional and Smartphone as well as Symbian Series60. But most curious is that all of the links are right to Monsoon Multimedia’s HAVA clients – on Monsoon’s servers! At first glance it looks like they’re leeching the clients, but perhaps Monsoon and ARCHOS did some kind of deal. Still, it looks sketchy.

There’s a lengthy demo video up on YouTube:

From the video it is clear that one client at a time is supported, so you can’t have multiple devices streaming from one TV+.

Spotted in EngadgetHD.

Disclaimer: I’m currently employed by Sling Media, which produces the Slingbox series of place-shifting products. And I suppose TVportation is ostensibly a competitor to Sling.

To be clear, I don’t think being able to take you recordings with you is a bad idea. I think systems like TiVo’s TiVoToGo and DISH Networks partnership with Archos (and the former PocketDISH players) to sync content from their DVRs to PMPs is a fine idea. No, my problem is with this implementation.

You’re taking the DVR with you. The whole DVR.

Think about that for a minute. If you’re on the road, and you have your DVR with you to watch your recordings, what’s at home recording the shows that air while you’re not there? Right, nothing. Unless you have another DVR – but then why have two? To me it doesn’t make any sense to take the DVR away with you. This player has some saving graces, in that it is basically a portable DVD player that put on some weight (for the drive), but that’s about it.

As PMPs get slicker, smaller, and more capable – see the newest offerings from Archos, not to mention the iPod Touch and iPhone – this unit is positively massive by comparison. And you know physically smaller players, which increased storage capacities, will be out by early 2009. By then we’ll probably have an iPod Touch with 32GB, or even 64GB, of flash.

In the past I’ve argued that media center PCs aren’t catching on for similar reasons. The market is moving toward laptops en masse. But if your main PC is a laptop, and it travels with you, then it doesn’t work very well as your media center DVR. So you’d need to buy another MCE PC just to be the stay-at-home DVR – which is costly if you don’t need the PC since you have the laptop.

I think Comcast would’ve been much better off working with Panasonic on something more like DISH Network’s Archos arrangement. A PMP that could be plugged into Comcast’s DVR STBs to sync content over for playback, not a unit that is a DVR itself. Either over USB, or the FireWire ports their STBs are required to have anyway. Leave the DVR at home.