Worldwide tablet sales may be falling, but according to figures from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, the iPad is still leading the product category when it comes to sales — despite five consecutive quarters of negative annual shipment growth.
Yay! We guess…
Apple shipped 12.6 million iPads in its most recent quarter, representing 26.8 percent of the market, or more than 1 in 4 tablets sold.
Following Apple was Samsung with 19.1 percent share of the market, Lenovo with a 5.3 percent share, Asus with 3.8 percent, and LG with 3.1 percent.
While Apple’s lead is certainly impressive, it’s also down a whopping 22.9 percent from this time last year. Samsung, for its part, fell 16.5 percent in terms of shipments.
There are several explanations for why the tablet market is slowing, but according to IDC the iPad’s biggest enemy might be Apple’s own plus-sized iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. That’s because tablets which are viewed as “true mobile solutions” rather than stay-at-home devices are defying the rest of the market by actually continuing to grow.
Since the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus exists as a sort of “phablet” that crosses over into both the phone and tablet market, it could be that the device’s extraordinary success is due to the fact that it taps into both smartphone and tablet sales.
IDC notes that it expects Apple to continue recording negative growth until the iPad portfolio is “significantly refreshed,” and suggests that this could be achieved either by way of a larger-sized iPad, or “introducing a dedicated version of iOS for its tablet lineup.”
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Source: IDC
