Sharp, the Japanese electronics maker, on Thursday said it would stop selling its Galapagos tablet computer less than a year after introducing the device, after it failed to gain traction in a market dominated by Apple¡¯s iPad.

The decision highlights Apple¡¯s stranglehold on the fast-growing segment, where global sales volume grew fourfold in the second quarter to 13.6m units, according to the market research firm IDC. Seven in 10 of those units were iPads, according to IDC.

Sharp, a big supplier of touchscreen liquid crystal displays for other manufacturers¡¯ tablets, had high hopes for its own device when it launched last December. Executives talked of selling 1m units in the first year, though in the event shipments reached only a couple of hundred thousand, according to analysts. Sharp did not disclose sales figures.

Sharp is the second electronics maker to give up fighting the iPad in recent weeks, after Hewlett-Packard said last month it would discontinue its TouchPad tablet. HP slashed the price of machines left in stock by 80 per cent, to $100.

Sharp had raised an extra hurdle for itself by giving the Galapagos its own dedicated operating system, a move that deterred outside software developers from creating applications for the device. The most successful rivals to the iPad ¨C notably the Samsung Galaxy ¨C use the Android operating system from Google, which has been adopted for tablets and smartphones by many manufacturers.

Sharp offered two standard retail versions of the Galapagos, with 5.5 inch and 10.8 inch screens, both of which it said it would discontinue at the end of this month. It will keep producing a 7 inch version, which it sells though eAccess, a small Japanese mobile phone operator, though the death of the other two models could weigh on demand for that model from eAccess subscribers.

The failure of two iPad rivals in the last two months could give pause to other companies with plans to challenge the US technology powerhouse. Sony is planning to unveil its tablet offering this week and Amazon, playing off the success of its more specialised Kindle e-book reading, is believed to be working on a tablet of its own.

Many observers in Japan thought the Galapagos cursed from the start due to its name, which is used to describe Japanese technologies that travel poorly outside the country, because they have been tailored too narrowly to local tastes or design specifications.

By: DocMemory
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