The latest worldwide tablet market report from research firm IDC shows that the category as a whole is seeing slowed growth. Perhaps more interesting, however, is that Apple's dominance seems to be dwindling at a pretty significant pace.
According to the report, Cupertino's market share fell more than 15 percent during the third quarter. Consumer, commercial and educational shipments all declined as rumors of the iPad mini gained traction.
IDC research director for tablets Tom Mainelli believes a lot of consumers sat out the third quarter to see what Apple would deliver next. Now that the iPad mini and fourth generation iPad are here, he expects Apple to have a very solid fourth quarter.
At the same time, however, the iPad mini's comparatively high entry price of $329 leaves plenty of room for budget-minded Android tablet makers to build on the success they garnered during Q3.
Jumping back to the data, Apple's market share fell to 50.4 percent during the past three months. Apple's loss translated into healthy gains for other manufacturers. For example, Samsung's total market share jumped to 18.4 percent but was overshadowed by the impressive 325 percent year-over-year growth.
Amazon managed to capture 9 percent of the overall tablet market during Q3. The company didn't offer a tablet during the same time period a year ago so there's no data to compare it with. Asus saw growth increase by 242.9 percent since last year which was good for 8.6 percent of the Q3 share. Lenovo rounded out the top five with 1.4 percent of the quarterly catch.