IHS: Apple still crowned tablet king with 70 percent share

Latest figures from research firm IHS iSuppli, who tracks worldwide device shipments, shows Apple remains far ahead of its rivals during second quarter of 2012.

In just two years of creating the worldwide tablet market, Apple has approximately 70 percent of the overall share -- rocketing by more than 58 percent year-on-year -- with 17 million shipments. Samsung however has around 11 percent of the market, dwarfed by its main rivals' share, with just 2.25 million tablet shipments.

By comparison, Amazon has 4 percent -- a drop by 13 percent on the first quarter of 2012, while Barnes & Noble has a meager 2 percent -- a drop by more than 25 percent on the previous quarter. 

IHS said it believes this to be the largest share of the market that Apple has held since the first quarter of 2011 when it more than 70 percent of the overall market share.

But how this will fare in the coming months -- with the newly released Google Nexus 7, and the forthcoming release of the Microsoft-branded Surface tablet -- remains to be seen.

Updated at 1:40 p.m. to strike out irrelevant figures.