Amidst Smartphone Boom, Tablets Witness A Modest Growth

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Smartphones and Phablets are constantly gaining popularity in common circles. On the other hand, users are reluctant to get new tablets or upgrade them with a newer version. Resulting in worldwide tablet shipment plummeting by 12 percent, to read 67 million units for fourth quarter of 2014. This, according to Canalys, is its first ever decline following several quarters of slowing demands.
As the worldwide tablet market suffers a decline, Apple iPad sales too took a slow track in the last quarter of 2014. This was the fourth quarter in a row for Apple’s iPad demand declining. Previously during the fourth quarter of 2013, the sales saw a temporary raise in sales on account of iPad Air launch.
In fourth quarter of 2014, Apple’s tablet shipments worldwide fell by about 18 percent. Samsung tablets, just like its smartphone sales, too suffered a drop by 24 percent. In spite of the drop, Apple gained the largest market share for tablets by 28.1 percent of total on shipping 21.4 million units. IDC also reported that Apple’s arch rival Samsung shipped a total of 11 million tablets to cover 14.5 percent market share. Other manufacturers too followed similar fashion. Amazon and Asus suffered huge decline as read in the stats below. Amidst of these declining figures, Lenovo shipped 3.7 million units to mark its best performance in a quarter ever, giving it about 5 percent of the total share.
The tablet market continues to mirror top heavy design with Apple and Samsung being the dominant ones. Other competitors like Lenovo, Amazon, Asus, etc. share a very small share of the total. With tablets losing their bling, full year shipments show modest growth of only 4.4 percent totaling 229.6 million units shipped worldwide.
Specifically talking about Apple, analysts indicated at iPhone 6’s popularity further hampering the iPad demands. Recently with the earnings report, Apple also hinted that Apple iPad demands might not see a drastic rise in coming future.