Apple continues to lead the tablet sales race, but just barely. The company saw iPad sales fall by nearly 40 percent worldwide since the holiday season, and sales are down even from a year ago. Samsung is biting into the Apple iPad market share with recent new tablet releases and a market share increase of over five percent since the holiday quarter.
The data comes from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, which reports that worldwide shipments of tablets and tablet-laptop “two-in-one” hybrids slipped to 50.4 million in the first quarter of 2014. That’s a decline of 35.7% from the high-volume holiday quarter and just 3.9% growth over the same period a year ago.
The slowdown was felt across operating systems and screen sizes and likely points to an even more challenging year ahead for the category, says IDC.
Apple shipping 16.4 million iPads this past quarter, down from 26 million units in the previous quarter and even down from 19.5 million units in the first quarter of 2013. Despite the contraction, the company saw its share of the market slip only modestly to 32.5%, down from the previous quarter’s share of 33.2%.
Samsung once again grew its worldwide share, increasing from 17.2% last quarter to 22.3% this quarter. The Korean electronics giant has continued to work aggressively with carriers to drive tablet shipments through competitively priced smartphone bundles.
Rounding out the top five were Asus (5%), Lenovo (4.1%), and Amazon (1.9%).
“The rise of large-screen phones and consumers who are holding on to their existing tablets for ever longer periods of time were both contributing factors to a weaker-than-anticipated quarter for tablets and two-in-ones,” says Tom Mainelli, IDC Program Vice President of Devices and Displays. “In addition, commercial growth has not been robust enough to offset the slowing of consumer shipments.”
