Apple’s iPad share of the tablet market has slipped from just over 50% in the December 2011 quarter to a third in the most recent quarter. Samsung has solidified its second place position with Amazon slipping to third. While Lenovo is in fifth place behind ASUS it is poised to move into fourth and could displace Amazon in a year if most two. (Note that my family and I own Apple’s stock).
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IDC published its preliminary worldwide tablet shipment data and I have developed a Google Doc with quarterly data for the past three years. Apple has seen its share of the tablet market drop from 51.6% with 15.4 million units shipped in the December 2011 quarter to 38.1% (22.9 million) in 2012 to 33.8% (26 million, 68% growth over two years) in the just ended December 2013 quarter. During the same two year timeframe Samsung’s share has increased from 7.3% (2.2 million units) in 2011 to 13.0% (7.8 million) in 2012 to 18.9% (14.5 million, 560% growth over two years).
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that markets such as the U.S. are reaching high levels of consumer saturation and while emerging markets continue to show strong growth this has not been enough to sustain the dramatic worldwide growth rates of years past,” said Tom Mainelli, Research Director, Tablets, at IDC. “We expect commercial purchases of tablets to continue to accelerate in mature markets, but softness in the consumer segment—brought about by high penetration rates and increased competition for the consumer dollar—point to a more challenging environment for tablets in 2014 and beyond.”
At the same time Amazon’s Kindle has increased its shipments from 4.7 million in the December 2011 quarter to 5.8 million in the past quarter. However it has lost over half its share going from 15.9% to 7.5%, falling from second to third place.
Lenovo’s shipments have increased from 800,000 a year ago to 3.4 million, an increase of 325%. Microsoft has also seen strong growth at 140% per Morgan Stanley’s estimate of 1.7 million Surface tablets shipped in the quarter.
“Lenovo’s access to the Chinese whitebox manufacturing infrastructure has helped it drive more low-priced tablet products into the market, growing its share from just 1.3% in the same quarter last year,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. “The company’s strength in emerging markets, and its increased market share in adjoining markets such as PCs and smartphones, makes it well positioned to see additional tablet gains in 2014.”
Source: IDC Worldwide Tablet Tracker, January 29, 2014
Follow me on Twitter @sandhillinsight. You can find my other Forbes posts here.
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Source: Forbes
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