Apple’s Stock May Not Be SOARING, But iPad Sales Are…

Sales of the iPad were the saving grace for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the company’s third-quarter earnings report announced last week, and the tablet looks set to drive profits for it for a long time to come. The iPad accounted for 68 percent of all tablet shipments in the world in the last quarter, according to a new research report, taking Apple’s share of the market to its highest level in almost two years.

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According to the research from Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments grew 67 percent year-over-year in the second calendar quarter to total 25 million, and were largely driven by the iPad.

Apple announced on Tuesday that it had sold 17 million iPads in the June-ending quarter, representing an 84 percent increase from the same period a year before. According to Strategy Analytics, a total of 7.3 million Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android-powered tablets were sold in the same period. That divides the total market into 68.3 percent for Apple, 29.3 percent for Android, and 1.2 percent for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which is banking on the launch of Windows 8 later this year as well as its own Surface to make a move in the space.

“Despite high expectations for companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Samsung, Acer, and Asus, the Android community has yet to make a serious dent in Apple’s dominance of the tablet market,” Strategy Analytics’ Neil Mawston said.

The report blamed less than spectacular designs and a “modest number of tablet-optimized services” for Android’s performance thus far, though the launch of the Google Nexus 7 is expected to make an extra push in the second half of the year. The new tablet is already doing fairly well, with its 16GB model already sold out.

Shares of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) finished closed at $585.16 per share last Friday.

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