Tablet boom continues to boost retailers

European retailers continue to celebrate strong tablet sales as the must-have devices continue to outsell both laptop and desktop PCs.
Newly released figures from consultancy firm Context have revealed that during the first two months of 2013, tablet sales had increased by 350 per cent on the same period of the previous year.
“While in the past we saw many tablets, such as the Kindle, sold exclusively via online channels, vendors such as Amazon are now taking advantage of the traditional bricks and mortar stores to complement their direct route to market by selling through supermarkets and stores, enabling consumers to touch, play with and buy their devices”, said Adam Simon, global managing director of retail research at Context.
"At the same time, click and collect purchases have helped retailers such as Argos post good trading results, the latter particularly helped by the increase in tablet sales," Simon continued.
Distribution continues to be dominated by Android-based tablets, with the devices accounting for 60 per cent of all tablets sold, whilst Windows 8 devices accounted for just 2 per cent as Microsoft maintains its focus on enterprise and business users.
The figures also highlighted that across Western Europe, Samsung tablets proved to be the most popular in both January and February, with the firm's seven-inch and ten-inch editions of the Galaxy Tab topping sales along with Samsung's Nexus 7 device.

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