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.”
Would you like to see an iPad-exclusive version of iOS? Leave your comments in the box below.
Source: IDC
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “iPad still king in a slowing tablet market”
so much for the post-pc world ;p
It should have been obvious. Everybody with few exceptions that carries a slate, hauls around a notebook, ultrabook, netbook or similar device, PC or Mac or Linux leading to the inevitable question: what’s the point of hauling a massive tablet around just to browse and email when your phablet does all of it, and you don’t have to have the size pockets of Hodor from Game of Thrones to wield the slate?
And as much as you slap a keyboard to a tablet, everybody knows that is like putting a spoiler on a pick up truck: you’re just being ridiculous. And as much as people like to pretend they carry their slate everywhere, everybody knows you leave it behind you when you need to be truly mobile. So if tablet and slates are too clumsy for productivity, and too clumsy for mobility, are they not in fact the ultimate refrigerator oven which would explain why nobody is in a rush to buy another ;)
I agree, and I think the equivalent logic applies to wearables, unless they need to be strapped on for functional reasons (eg monitoring heart rate, skin temp etc). Large, but pocketable tech seems to meet today’s needs and a second (larger or smaller) device is superfluous for the average person.
At a desk, a keyboard still wins for most people: laptop or Surface-type device. We are in a post-tablet world. Who saw that coming?