In slumping tablet market, Apple still rules

Shipments grew 82 per cent year-on-year and now these tablets - essentially touchscreen PCs - have a 13 per cent market share, which is impressive considering that the iPad's share is currently 22 per cent.

Samsung kept its position as the number two brand in the first-quarter shipment ranking.

Surprisingly, Amazon made its way to the top three vendors in the list.

Meanwhile, detachable tablets - devices that include removable keyboards - saw triple-digit year-over-year growth on shipments of more than 4.9 million units, an all-time high for the first quarter of a calendar year.

IDC said Apple remained the top seller with a 25.9 per cent market share even though its iPad sales fell 18.8 per cent from a year ago.

Tablet shipments declined during the first quarter, but a curious change is occurring. And newer tablets don't offer enough new features to entice people to upgrade. The company shipped 2.2 million Fire tablets, and experienced a phenomenal 5421.7% YoY growth.

Another data point helps confirm that tablet vendors are driving down price: Separately, IDC reported Thursday that budget ARM vendor Mediatek became the preferred microprocessor vendor during the third quarter of 2015, bypassing Apple for the first time. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said earlier this week that he expects Apple's best year-over-year revenue performance in two years from the iPad segment this quarter. While good for tablet makers, it presents a new problem for the already beleaguered PC makers, as OEMs once focused exclusively on mobile devices start churning out convertibles in a grab for the new market.

Lenovo's first-quarter tablet shipments fell 26% compared with the previous quarter to 2.2 million units. While PC sales around the world declined, the company's Surface line of hybrid-tablets or "detachables" breathed life into a new market.

"With the PC industry in decline, the detachable market stands to benefit as consumers and enterprises seek to replace their aging PCs with detachables", said Kitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst with IDC's worldwide quarterly mobile device trackers.

The main factor behind this plunge in tablet markets is that the customers are not interested anymore. "Large growth in other areas, such as Africa, is unlikely unless there is a dramatic reduction in the ASP (average selling price) of lower-end smartphones, meaning that the market decline will to continue throughout the year".

Source: In slumping tablet market, Apple still rules