The surprising runner-up in 2011′s tablet wars

It's pretty clear that the iPad has dominated the tablet market over the last year. But the tablet in second place in terms of units sold might come as a surprise to some.

Hewlett Packard, manufacturer of the TouchPad, managed to snag 17% of the non-iPad market according to NPD. That might come as even more of a shock when you consider that HP announced it would be discontinuing the TouchPad after less than two months on the market.

Then again, that could be precisely why it led to the TouchPad being the second best-selling tablet on the market this year. After its discontinuation was announced, retailers slashed the price of the tablet from $499 to only $99, putting it on par with many ebook readers and far below the asking price of other tablets, iPads and non-iPad units alike.

HP's reason for discontinuing the TouchPad? According to Ars Technica, HP stated in an earnings call that it was because the TouchPad had failed to get second place over the two months it was available.

What's really telling is the number of units sold before that big price drop. Reports indicate that Best Buy was only able to sell about 25,000 units at the original price. By October, HP had sold a total of 204,000 units across all retailers.

Of course, the iPad still continues to handily dominate the tablet market. Apple sold 11.2 million iPads in the last quarter alone, making HP a very, very distant second in comparison.

In fact, the entire non-iPad tablet market still has a long way to go to catch up to iPad numbers even when you combine all the sales. More than 1.2 million units have sold in the U.S. between January and October of this year, just a tenth of what the iPad has sold.

Those non-iPad tablets have plenty of time to catch up, though: it's estimated that by 2014, there will be 89.5 million tablet owners in the U.S., and 32% of them will have something other than an iPad in their hands.