Tablets are slowly taking away a share of the pie in personal computing market from PCs. The revolution has been driven primarily by Apple and Samsung. The reports for the Q1 2014 tablet shipments have come out and they do not seem as promising as we would have wanted them to be. The shipments have increased slightly on year on year basis but when it comes to quarter on quarter, things are a bit gloomy as per a report from International Data Corporation (IDC states).
- Q1 2014 to Q1 2013 - 3.9 percent growth in sales
- Q1 2014 to Q4 2013 - 35.7 percent drop in sales
- Total number of tablet shipments - 50.4 million units
Key Notes
- Apple was the leader of the pack by shipping 16.4 million units and gaining a 32.5 percent share of segment (down from 33.2 percent of Q4 2013). The sales stood below the 19.5 million of Q1 2013 and 26 million of Q4 2013. So it surely needs to pull up its socks in this regard.
- Samsung as a mater of fact gained in terms of market share and stood second with a 22.3 percent share. It has been primarily due to the attractive offers Samsung offers along with its devices.
- Asus stood 3rd with 5 percent of market share and the majority of the sales can be attributed to the Nexus 7 tablets.
- Lenovo with its low cost tablets got itself a decent 4.1 percent share and Amazon had a 1.9 percent share.
Android continues to be the leader in terms of operating system market share and it runs on almost two-thirds of the tablets on sale right now. Next is iOS and even Windows 8 is gaining traction as a choice of operating system. The reasons for the slowdown are being predicted as the fact that people are holding on to their current tablets for longer and the sizes of smartphone screens are entering the tablet territory as well.
