ASUS Tablet Shipments Expected to Fall 30% in 2015

ASUS is a company that has enjoyed a long and fairly prosperous history when it comes to tablets. They hit the market hard with the launch of the original Eee Pad Transformer back in the days of Android 3.0 Honeycomb and of course, they were responsible for both generations of the incredibly good value-for-money Nexus 7. More recently however, ASUS has focused on the lower-end of the Android tablet market, which is where the money apparently lies in such a competitive market. Not too long ago, the company debuted a new line of Android tablets, the ZenPad line, and while ASUS is hoping these will boost tablet sales for the company, analysts aren't so sure.

According to a report from DigiTimes, analysts are expecting ASUS to ship 6 – 7 Million tablets in 2015, down 30% or so from the 9.4 Million tablets shipped in 2014. Tablets not doing so well is certainly not a unique problem on ASUS' part, and in fact the whole industry is scratching their heads when it comes to tablet sales. Shipments for 2015 have practically stood still compared to 2014, regardless of the manufacturer and while tablets like the recently launched Xperia Z4 Tablet from Sony are pushing a replacement for your laptop, consumers aren't biting. It's more than likely that as tablets seem to last longer for consumers, there isn't as much of a rush to upgrade each year as they can be with smartphones.

As with previous tablet models, ASUS is pushing the ZenPad models with a focus on the overall experience, rather than just specs alone. Hopefully, the company will be able to better market their tablets this year, as for $200 you can get the ZenPad S8 with performance and features similar to ASUS' excellent ZenFone 2 that launched earlier this year. Whether or not tablets will turn around in 2016 seems to rest in Google's hands, as companies like ASUS, Samsung and Sony can ship some of the best hardware available, but if the software doesn't offer anything compelling enough for phablet users, then ultimately the manufacturer will have a hard time shipping such devices.

Source: ASUS Tablet Shipments Expected to Fall 30% in 2015