Tablet sales continued a downward death spiral in 2016, losing a further 20.1% year over year, marking the second straight year of decline.
Ryan Reith, program vice-president, IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers, said, “Tablets without a dedicated keyboard (which IDC refers to as slates), are continuing to lose global relevancy.
"We see future growth in some emerging markets like the Middle East, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe with the sole catalysts being simplicity and low cost. Unfortunately for the industry, these are the devices that don't equate to large revenues."
Jitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst with IDC, said, “The market continues to warm up to two-in-one devices, but we're now getting to a point where the price and performance disparity between detachables and convertibles has started to narrow, and this added competition led to a dampening in the growth of detachable tablets.
{loadposition ray}"However, we expect this to be temporary as only two of the three major platforms have any significant hardware presence in the detachable market, and as the ecosystems are further refined with future updates and developer support.”
Tablet Vendor Highlights
Apple still leads but it is not immune to overall market challenges, and was down 18.8% in 4Q16. The iPad Pro line-up made up less than 10% of overall shipments as the iPad Air 2 and Mini tablets continued to account for most shipments.
Samsung remained the number two tablet vendor with 15.1%, down 11.4%. The Tab S2 and Tab A continue to be the strongest models for Samsung and its largest markets for tablet consumption continue to be the United States, Europe, and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan).
Amazon's Fire tablets continued their hot streak, earning the company third place overall in 4Q16. The already low-cost tablets were further discounted during the Black Friday sales period although this was still not enough to stave off an annual decline.
Lenovo was one of the two vendors to grow in 4Q16. With a broad line-up and innovative designs, IDC expects this vendor will be one to watch in 2017.
Huawei's value proposition is cellular connectivity and this was evidenced in their portfolio as most of their tablets offered built-in 3G or 4G connectivity. To date, it has done well in expanding their reach to Asian, European, and Middle Eastern markets, though their tablet presence in the US is close to non-existent.
Comment
iOS and Android slates continue to decline for several reasons. At first, they were somewhat of a novelty, they were great content consumption devices, and the price gap between them and a “full-fat” computing device with a keyboard/mouse was significant.
Hybrids came on the scene and were expensive – iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface being at least twice, if not many times more, the price of standard tablets. Entry-level hybrids now meet slate prices and 360° convertibles are cheaper again. Acer, HP, and Lenovo will all have full-fat Windows 10 hybrids aimed at the K-12 market starting at US$198. It won’t be long before we see these in stores too. Then there is the threat from Chrome OS and Windows on ARM devices that we will see next year.
Another reason for the slate decline is the desire by many to converge devices. Phablet sales are picking up as evidenced by the enormous popularity of OPPO’s 6” R9 Plus which sold out, Huawei’s Mate series, and in China Lenovo’s 6.4” Phab2 also sold out. Take-up of the 5.7” Samsung Galaxy Note7 was very strong before its recall.