Apple sells more than eight iPads for each tablet sold by Samsung

Apple sold more than eight iPads during the first quarter for each tablet device second place competitor Samsung sold, according to new figures.

The NPD DisplaySearch figures reveal that Apple shipped about 13.6 million tablet devices and achieved a marketshare of 62.8%.

This was more than eight times higher than the 1.6 million units shipped during the quarter by second place competitor Samsung (7.5 % marketshare), which in turn was well ahead of the 900,000 units (4% marketshare) shipped worldwide by Amazon.

The NDP DisplaySearch figures place BlackBerry marker Research in Motion (RIM) and Asus, best known for its line of Transformer hybrid devices, in third and fourth place respectively. This seemingly contradicts an earlier quarterly report by IDC Worldwide which had Barnes & Noble and Lenovo rounding out the top five, although this may be down to ambiguity about whether hybrid devices and eBook readers should be included in tablet device marketshare figures.

According to NDP DisplaySearch’s figures, RIM and Asus each shipped around 500,000 units worldwide, with each company claiming a marketshare around 2.3%.