Low-cost detachables keep tablet market alive while slates continue to slump: IDC

   

Tablets and slates are on the way out. The tablet market worldwide showed a slump in their growth for yet another quarter as IDC reported an year-over-year decline of 14.7 per cent in units shipped by vendors worldwide.

Low cost detachables saw a boost in market share while slates continued to decline. IDC's Senior Research Analyst Jitesh Ubrani said in a press note, "Unfortunately, many low-cost detachables also deliver a low-cost experience."

"The race to the bottom is something we have already experienced with slates and it may prove detrimental to the market in the long run as detachables could easily be seen as disposable devices rather than potential PC replacements," he added.

However, the holiday season did boost tablet sales from large vendors by 9.8 per cent in the third quarter as compared to the second quarter in 2016 with Apple, Amazon, Lenovo and Huawei gaining in market share while Samsung and other smaller vendors losing out on it.

This is despite the total growth in tablet sales declining by 14.7 per cent. Even though Apple sold 600,000 devices less than what they did same time last year, it gained back 1.9 per cent of the market thanks to its iPad Pro which kept the revenues from declining. 

Samsung on the other hand sold 1.6 million units less than what they did in the third quarter of 2015 and their market share declined by 0.9 per cent. Despite this, Samsung continued to rule the tablet market at number 2 spot. IDC states that this is mostly because Samsung'sdetachable TabPro S which came out early 2016 was not competitively priced. Concentrating highly on slates also did not work.

Amazon on the other hand posted a 319.9 per cent surge in their Fire tablets. IDC states its Prime Day sales as the primary reason when the price of the Fire tablet was slashed by 30 per cent in July. Amazon released the Fire HD 8 tablet in October and IDC reports it will maintain the momentum Amazon had last quarter.

Lenovo's market share grew by 0.3 per cent mostly due to its successfulYoga Book brand of detachables, even though total sales declined by 0.4 million units from over last quarter.

Huawei's popularity in the smartphone market spilled over to their tablet sales as well. Huawei offers cellular connectivity in their tablets for the price of Wi-Fi only tablets by other vendors and IDC reported Huawei's tablet sales grew by 28.4 per cent from last year. Huawei also swam against the tide and posted an increase in sales by 500,000 units with a rise of 1.9 per cent in market share.

Other smaller vendors, on the other hand saw their sales and market share declining. Sales declined by 7.9 million units while the market share declined by 9 per cent.

Source: IDC