Tablet sales will be equivalent to 15 per cent of PC market in 2011, according to beancounters at IDC. Apple increased its market share in "media tablets" in the second quarter of the year even as new Android tablets were launched, while BlackBerry-maker RIM sold less than than 700,000 of its PlayBook tablet.

IDC also raised its forecast for the number of tablets that will be shipped this year by 17 per cent, from 53.5 million to 62.5 million. It downrated PC shipments, and cut growth forecasts to less than 3 per cent. Overall, IDC expects a total of 357m PCs to be shipped in 2011.

IDC says the tablet market grew between the first and second quarters from 7.2 million units to 13.6 million. Android tablet shipments grew substantially, from 2.45 million to 3.64 million, an increase of nearly 50 per cent. Apple's iPad shipments grew from 4.73m to 9.3m, a 97 per cent growth. IDC suggests that Android tablets will see their share fall as low as 23 per cent in the third quarter it will growing to 25.9 per cent in the fourth quarter.

While Amazon plans to release a tablet later this year, IDC will not include this as part of the tablet figures. This is because it is slated to be highly successful and will give Apple a good kicking. IDC said the new device will run a customised version of Android that ties its use to Amazon's content services, we expect the device to more closely resemble Barnes & Noble's Color Nook than Apple's iPad 2.

However the iPad also has ties to its content services and we fail to see the difference. So in other words you only have any chance of being counted as a competition tablet if you offer the same things that the latest Apple toy has.

We think we can spot something wrong with this method of gathering statistics and can start to question how pro-Apple IDC is getting of late.