A total of 43.23 million tablets shipped in the last calendar quarter of 2019, a new report from DigiTimes Research claims. Of these, Apple was the number one vendor, responsible for just under one-third of all tablets shipped.
In particular, Apple’s biggest hit was the 10.2-inch iPad, which hit stores in late September 2019.
Unfortunately, DigiTimes doesn’t provide an exact breakdown of iPad models shipped over the quarter. Instead, it says that Apple had “mass shipments” of the device, which helped push it into the number one spot. The number two company in terms of shipments was Samsung, while Amazon followed in third place, Huawei in fourth, and Microsoft in fifth. Lenovo, conspicuous in its absence, fell out of the top five.
The report notes that, when it comes to tablets, the bigger the better. Tablets that measured 10 inches or more accounted for 70% of global volumes. This figure is likely to increase to almost 75% in the first quarter of 2020. Meanwhile, 7-inch devices will fall from their current 10.7% of the market to just 5.7%. Since phones keep getting larger, it seems that the people buying devices with that screen size are opting for phones over tablets.
Photo: DigiTimes Research
Since Apple doesn’t reveal unit sales (which can be different to shipments) any more, it’s tough to work out the accuracy of DigiTimes‘ figures. The figures are slightly lower than a recent report from analysts at IDC. IDC says that Apple shipped 15.9 million tablets during the October through December quarter. This reportedly gave it a 36.5% share of the global tablet market. By my calculations, that assumes a total market size of 53 million tablets shipped during Q4.
During Apple’s most recent quarter, net iPad sales were down compared to the same quarter in 2019. This is largely the result of the iPad Pro launch at that time in 2019.
The iPad recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, having debuted back in January 2010.
