The decline in sales of tablets is a hard pill to swallow
Source: Statista
In 2010 Apple released its first iPad, and other phone makers followed suit with the production of tablets, leading to a global tablet boom. Hell, I saw people switch to using smaller tablets (phablets) as their primary cellphone. It really looked like this:
Statista has now shared that tablets are becoming less popular around the world. Q3 2018 marked the 16th consecutive quarter of declining tablet shipments, during which shipments dropped by 35% from 55.7 million in Q3 2014 to 36.4 million units in Q3 2018.
IDC has shared data on tablet sales from the big global tech companies:
| Company | 3Q18 Unit Shipments | 3Q18 Market Share | 3Q17 Unit Shipments | 3Q17 Market Share | Year-Over-Year Growth |
| 1. Apple | 9.7 | 26.6% | 10.3 | 25.9% | -6.1% |
| 2. Samsung | 5.3 | 14.6% | 6.0 | 15.0% | -11.4% |
| 3. Amazon.com | 4.4 | 12.0% | 4.4 | 11.0% | -0.4% |
| 4. Huawei | 3.2 | 8.9% | 3.0 | 7.6% | 7.1% |
| 5. Lenovo* | 2.3 | 6.3% | 3.1 | 7.7% | -24.5% |
| Others | 11.5 | 31.6% | 13.1 | 32.9% | -12.1% |
| Total | 36.4 | 100.0% | 39.9 | 100.0% | -8.6% |
| Lenovo (excluding Fujitsu volume in 3Q17)** | 2.3 | 6.3% | 3.0 | 7.4% | -22.1% |
| Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PCD Tracker, November 2, 2018 | |||||
The IDC has also shown the unit market share of tablets by brand between Q3 2017 and Q3 2018:
Is the next wave smaller, or long but thin (think Samsung Galaxy S9+)? Let’s see how the year ends…
