According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, the Apple iPad captured 80% share of tablet shipments in North America during the second quarter of 2011.

“Apple completely dominates the North American tablet market, capturing 80% share of 7.5 million shipments during Q2 2011,” says Alex Spektor, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Apple remains a long way ahead of its main rivals such as Motorola, Samsung, RIM, Asus and HTC. A combination of cool branding, user-friendly hardware, entertaining services and savvy retail distribution has made Apple a formidable market leader.”

Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics, adds: “Provided the pricing, screen size and hardware design are right, Amazon can be one of the main challengers to Apple’s dominance. Like Apple, Amazon has a strong brand, compelling content, sophisticated billing systems and widespread distribution. In effect, Amazon’s new tablet product represents a good opportunity to place an Amazon shopping cart in the hands of American consumers, offering optimized access to purchasing digital content or physical goods from the Amazon online store.”

The full report, “Global Tablet Vendor Market Share by Region: Q2 2011”, is published by the Strategy Analytics Tablet & Touchscreen (TTS) service, details of which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3zs57yr .