UK punters' love affair with the iPad shows no sign of abating after figures revealed Apple accounted for nearly four out of five fondleslabs sold into channels last quarter.

More than 1.2 million tablets were flogged to disties, retailers and vendors' stores in Q4, up 91 per cent year-on-year, with iOS accounting for 79 per cent of the market, abacus-stroker IDC's figures show.

"Nearly all vendors are suffering from the same issue: Android," said IDC research manager Eszter Morvay. "From a price performance standpoint the OS is not nearly as competitive as Apple's."

She said that Android app quality was not closely monitored by Google and offered users an "inferior experience" for a similar price point to the iPad.

Outside of Apple the only vendors to make real headway last quarter were Archos and Viewsonic - purveyors of low cost devices - but despite shipping 19,000 and 16,000 units they still only held a small single-digit share of total market sales.

Samsung remains the closest competitor to Apple with 5.6 per cent market share but its shipments declined 35 per cent, said IDC,. Sony flogged 11,000 tablets, Asus sold 9,000, Lenovo notched up 6,000 and Acer managed 4,000, it said.

IDC expects a dip in iPad 2 sales this quarter as consumers and businesses delay purchases in anticipation of the next-generation device. ®