Beancounters over at IDC expect Apple to maintain its dominance in the tablet market throughout 2011, possibly even further.

Tablet sales in EMEA markets exploded over the past few quarters, closing at 4.4 million units in the second quarter. This is a 394 percent increase year over year and an 82 percent boost over Q1. The market is still dominated by Apple’s iPad 2 and the comfortable lead is likely to extend well into 2012, as Apple seems unlikely to launch the third generation iPad anytime soon.

Although the market had high hopes for Android tablets, sales in the first half of the year were unimpressive to say the least. It is hard to pin the blame on any particular factor, but Google’s delay of Honeycomb and relatively high prices of high-end Android tablets come to mind. In fact, only a few vendors managed to make any significant inroads in the Apple dominated market, Samsung being perhaps the most notable one.

IDC believes the tablet market in EMEA still has a lot of room for growth and it expects about 33 million tablets to ship in the region next year. Android is expected to seize about 34 percent of the market, but Apple won’t gamble away its lead without a fight. The new iPad 3 should take up the Android newcomers next year and iOS will remain the dominant operating system in the tablet market for the time being. Windows 8 will also enter the fray sometime next year, while WebOS is as dead as Elvis.