Q1 Results: Tablet Market Driven by Samsung

May 2013, the International Data Corporation (IDC) published its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker report. The results showed that with a total shipment of 49.2 million units, the first quarter of 2013 surpassed total shipments for the entire first half of 2012. Growth was fueled by increased market demand for smaller screen devices.

Fast forward to one year later and we see that the market share has steadily increased. On May 14, 2014, Strategy Analytics released the results of their latest research on the tablet market. According to this report, global tablet shipments reached 56.7 million units in the Q1 of 2014.  That represents about a 15 percent increase year-over-year.

It seems that last year, Android tablets made a lot of headway and gained on Apple’s iPads. Strategy Analytics’ report shows that iPad shipments came in below expectations, in fact, iOS fell to only a 29 percent of the tablet market share. Apple had a difficult quarter with shipments down 16 percent compared to Q1 2013.

While the overall leader was Samsung, who delivered shipment growth of 40 percent year-over-year, they had company from Chinese multinational computer technology company, Lenovo. These were on the top five ranked vendors that represented shipment growth. Inclusively, Android tablet shipments grew by about 46 percent for the quarter.

Peter King, who is director of tablets at Strategy Analytics, said, "Despite Apple iPad shipments (sell-in) declining 16 percent against Q1 last year, Apple still holds 50 percent of the value share in Q1 2014, in fact it increased its wholesale average selling price (ASP) by five percent from the previous quarter. This clearly demonstrates the strong grip it has on the premium end of the market, but the declining unit share indicates that it is the lower price-tiers that are gaining traction especially in the Asia-Pacific region which is now the largest in terms of Tablet shipments and value."

A breakdown of the global tablet vendor shipments and market share can be seen in the following chart:

We have begun to see a similar trend in smartphone shipments. As emerging regions begin to develop with additional wireless networks being deployed, there is a greater need for low end, cheaper devices that do not offer all of the functionality of an iPhone. It appears that the same can be expected from the tablet market.

King mentions that in the Asia-Pacific region what is gaining traction and increasing the numbers for Android tablets is the fact that lower priced devices are becoming increasingly more popular. As more of these emerging regions continue to develop, it will be interesting to see what effect there will be on the overall mobile device market. Clearly Samsung and Lenovo have a head start in this area.