A report released on Friday by IDC suggests that the worldwide tablet market saw a decline of 8.6% during the third quarter of 2018, in concrete figures, shipment figures dropped to 36.4 million from 39.9 million. The research firm stated that slate tablets made up the majority of sales with 31.6 million units sold, and detachable tablets representing the other 4.8 million units; both categories were down 7.9% and 13.1% respectively year-on-year.
Discussing the findings, Lauren Guenveur, senior research analyst for IDC’s Tablet team, said:
“The detachable market has failed to see growth in 2018, a worrying trend that has plagued the category off and on since the end of 2016. In October we finally saw the highly anticipated refreshes of Apple's iPad Pro and Microsoft's Surface Pro, as well as new products by Samsung and Google, which lead us to believe that the last quarter of the year will turn the detachable category around, at least for the time being. Increasingly sparse are new products by the top-tier PC OEMs as they remain more focused on their convertible portfolio, a move that will ultimately affect the overall trajectory of the detachable market going forward.”
According to IDC’s statistics, the third quarter was only beneficial for Huawei, while Amazon just managed to keep pace with last years statistics. For Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, and Others, shipments were in decline when looking at the year-on-year figures. Lenovo and Samsung saw the biggest drops in shipments.
As Guenveur points out, several of the big brands released new products in October just in time for the holiday season. The next quarter’s readings will really indicate the general health of the tablet market, as people look around for presents to buy.
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