According to the latest numbers out of the IDC, global tablet sales continued to decline this quarter.
Worldwide shipments of tablets fell 8.5% to 36.2 million, making this the tenth straight quarter of decline for the category.
According to Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers, “the rate at which the tablet market grew from 2010 to 2013 was unlike many other consumer-oriented device markets we’ve seen before. However, it appears for many reasons consumers became less eager to refresh these devices, or in some instances purchase them at all. We continue to believe the leading driver for this was the increased dependency on smartphones, along with rather minimal technology and form factor progression.”
Interestingly, Huawei was the only company among the top 5 vendors to experience positive growth in 1Q17 with shipments of 2.7 million, up 31.7% from the 2.0 million shipped in the 1Q16.
The IDC say Apple is in a good spot to remain competitive at the top of the market despite using a ‘mobile OS’, despite many of its competitors entering the space with Windows-based devices and longer-term trends on consumer demand.
“A long-term threat to the overall PC market lies in how the market ultimately settles on the detachable versus convertible debate,” said Linn Huang, research director, Devices & Displays at IDC.
“To date, detachable shipments have dwarfed those of convertibles, but growth of the former has slowed a bit. In IDC’s 2017 U.S. Consumer PCD Survey, fielded over the previous two months, detachable owners held slightly more favorable attitudes towards their detachables than convertible owners did for their convertibles. However, owners of both were far more likely to recommend a convertible over a detachable.”
