In like 2015 before all the OEMs lost interest when it turned out tablets didn't have phone-esque upgrade cycles maybe? Isn't the Android tablet market basically on life support from occasional Samsung refreshes at this stage?
I dont think so, it's more active recent year. There are a lot of good Chinese tablet(from well known brand). Xiaomi, lenovo, vivo, oppo and oneplus all have "flagship" tablet(running high end CPU, with very good screen and build quality)
I think usually people that only see iPads around come from the few markets that are dominated by Apple.
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/tablet/europe
If you go world wide in another data set, it is around 54%
https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/global-tablet-market-share/
Even considering the more generous number, that makes half of the tablets being sold across the planet are not iPads.
They are all (AFAIK) based around android 9 or 10.
You are seriously almost better off just doing something like a windows tab converted to a linux machine.
That’s not what I see when I lookup tablets. My old cheap Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2022 version) has Android 14 with security patch from May 2025.
My SO bought a cheap Xiaomi tablet this month with Android 15 and patch from August 2025.