Samsung, together with Apple, is losing its market share to third-placer Lenovo and others in the shrinking tablet market as indicated in the latest IDC Quarterly Tablet Tracker, released Wednesday, July 29.
As Phys.org summarizes the research firm's findings, Apple is still the top vendor with 10.9 million iPads sold in the past quarter, for a market share of 24.5 percent. However, iPad sales were down 17.7 percent from a year earlier and Apple lost more than three points of market share. Meanwhile, Samsung remained number two with 7.6 million tablets sold, for a 17 percent market share but with a staggering 12 percent sales drop from a year earlier.
The remarkable highlight is the modest growth from Lenovo, stronger in number three, and impressive growth from Huawei and LG, both tied for fourth. Lenovo sold 2.5 million tablets for a 5.7 percent market share, with unit sales growing 6.8 percent. Huawei doubled its sales to 1.6 million units. LG also sold 1.6 million units, a 246 percent increase from the previous year, IDC said via Phys.org.
However, behind this report, the slump in the tablet market is still lurking around as IDC projects tablet shipments to rise 12% this year, a far cry from 52% growth of a year before.
Meanwhile,Tech Crunch reports that the study about the cause of this slump to the tablet market points to an overall plateau in tablet sales worldwide. Its saturation in the consumer market may have a lot to do with it. Moreover, tablet replacement rates are not the same as replacement rates for smartphones. And lastly, the rise in phablets also has something to do with the slump. Consumers are using these phablets as a substitute for the bigger tablets.
With that in mind, the Apple effort to revive their tablet sales by releasing the iPad Pro later this year will be a bit doomed. Even Macworld doesn't think it would make a lot of sense to launch a 12-inch iPad right now, given the declining interest in the tablet market as a whole. For them, launching a big, costly tablet would be an odd move to make this year as the tablet market continues to slump.
This slump might continue in the world of tablet sale. But with the challenge it brings to tablet manufacturers, a sooner gamechanger is expected to revive tablet popularity.
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