Positive growths by 4 of the 5 vendors failed to prevent the decline in global worldwide tablet market as third quarter of 2017 (Q3-2017) shipments closed at 40-million units.
Q3-2017 flashed yet another negative growth of 5.4% – denoting traumatizing 12th sequential quarter of annual decline, according to latest data released through IDC Worldwide Tablet Market Tracker.
The market intelligence firm imputes growing smartphones market demand, prolonged replacement cycle of tablets and consolidation of traditional PCs as the major factors for steady tablets market degeneration.
In 2016, the tablet market had a hard landing when the shipments fell by 15.6% – to 174.8 million units as compared to 207.1 million units in 2015. The growth of both Apple and Samsung was seriously interjected by -14.2% and -20.5% respectively.
This is not going to change in 2017 either!
Tablet market is set to suffer a critical blow at the close of 2017 as well. The 9M-2017 data shows total shipments of 114.2 million units so the market is lagging behind by 60 million units to avoid another year of decline.
Nevertheless, there are some good vistas too!
As of 2016, although Apple (24.4%) and Samsung (15.2%) reined the global tablet market followed by Lenovo and Huawei but there is a challenger coming up quickly, Amazon – that has already pushed Lenovo and Huawei on the backseat to clutch third place in 2016.
The e-commerce company nearly doubled its market in 2016 – shipping million units at exploding 98.8% growth rate.
Amazon has been the star performer in 2017 as well and posted enormous 38.7% growth in Q3-2017 under highly detrimental market conditions. The largest e-commerce company in the world shipped 9.0 million units in the first 9 months of 2017 to fortify its market share to 7.8%.
But Huawei is not going to give Amazon a smooth sailing!
Like Amazon, Huawei also demonstrated a solid growth in 2016 – and shipped 9.7 million units in 2016 at breathtaking 49.9% growth. The Chinese multinational networking and telecommunication company also shipped 8.7 million units in 9M-2017 to capture market share of 7.6%.
So, it is going to be fierce battle between Amazon and Huawei for the third place in the final quarter of the year.
Lenovo was one of the vendors, IDC expected to watch in 2017 despite its flat growth in 2016; -1.2%. However the Chinese technology company could ship just 7.3 million units in 9M-2017 to settle at its market share of 6.4%.
Ironically, Lenovo needs to ship 3.8 million units Q4-2017 to catch up with its last year’s market of 11.1 million units that seems to be highly unlikely overseeing its current dismal performance.