It depends how you look at it. There’s no arguing with the fact that the iPad is one of the most successful products the world has ever seen, and that Apple is literally selling them as fast as it can get them off the assembly line.

On the other hand, as CNET’s Brooke Crothers notes ^[1], in the second quarter of 2011, the iPad had 61 percent of the tablet market, down from 94 percent in the same period of 2010. What does this mean? Crothers focuses on “sell out”–the fact that Apple sells just about every iPad it makes. The Android tablet makers, not so much.

We think it’s useful to remember that we aren’t, um, comparing apples to apples here. iOS runs on precisely one tablet currently in production, while Android runs on too many to count. And, as Crothers notes, most of the tech world’s biggest players–Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, and even Barnes & Noble–are selling or about to launch Android devices.

Will that be enough to level the playing field? The market trend would seem to say yes.

Read more at CNET ^[1].