International Data Corporation (IDC) has come out with some very interesting data for the first quarter of 2014, and they practically confirmed what everyone was suspecting all along: that the tablet market has reached its peak point, with phablets getting a big chunk of its pie.
Here’s the table they posted:
Vendor
1Q14 Unit Shipments
1Q14 Market Share
1Q13 Unit Shipments
1Q13 Market Share
Year-over-Year Growth
Apple
16.4
32.5%
19.5
40.2%
-16.1%
Samsung
11.2
22.3%
8.5
17.5%
32.0%
ASUS
2.5
5.0%
2.6
5.4%
-2.8%
Lenovo
2.1
4.1%
0.6
1.3%
224.3%
Amazon.com Inc.
1.0
1.9%
1.8
3.7%
-47.1%
Others
17.2
34.2%
15.5
31.8%
11.5%
Grand Total
50.4
100.0%
48.6
100.0%
3.9%
As you can see, Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the market, with Samsung in particular getting a healthy jump in market share. The devil though, as they say, is in the details. Even though 50.2 million tablets were shipped during the quarter, shipments overall seem to be on the decline. Compared to Q4 2013, which saw shipments of over 69 million tablets, there is a substantial drop of over 35%; showing signs that the tablet market quickly approaches saturation. One of the main factors attributing to that, is the rising popularity of phablets and large screen mobile phones. IDC posted that for the first quarter of the year, mobile phone and phablet shipments saw a healthy increased of 28.6% over last year’s Q1, clearly indicating the cannibalisation that is taking place at the moment. Windows devices are also starting to make a dent in this challenging market, like Asus’ T100, which was a sleeper hit according to analysts. Android’s dominance isn’t going away any time soon though, with two-thirds of the market powered by the all-conquering OS from Mountain View.
