According to IDC’s preliminary data, the Worldwide 2-in-1 detachable tablet market grows 10.3% with 6.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017. The regular tablets were shipped around 43.1 million units during the fourth quarter with 141.7 million the entire year which is a decline of 7.6% from the previous year.
The 2-in-1 detachable market the entire year remained positive although it showed signs of slowing as detachable tablets grew 1.6% YoY in 2017, down from the 24% growth in 2016. IDC claims that the slowness can be attributed to high profile devices like the Surface, which was off schedule. In terms of regular tablets, since the margins are narrow, the end-user demand has slowed significantly in the last few years and this year it hit 7.6% from YoY.
As expected, Apple retained the top position through its lower-priced 9.7-inch iPad as well as its newly refreshed iPad Pro products. Apple shipped over 13.2 million units a narrow increase from 13.1 YoY. Surprisingly, Amazon placed itself comfortably in the second place pushing Samsung to third. Amazon’s steep discounts during the holiday season paid off well. The E-commerce giant shipped 7.7 million units compared to 5.2 units with 50.3% YoY.
Samsung has seen a steep fall and has sold just 7 Million units in Q4 2017 compared to 8 million units in Q4 2016. Huawei and Lenovo claim the 4th and 5th position with 3.5 and 3.1 million units. However, if we see the detachable and slate tablet market for an entire year, Samsung moves back to 2nd place 24.9 million units which are yet again a fall from 26.6 in 2016.
Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers said:
To date, much of the trajectory of the detachable market has been attributed to Microsoft and Apple pushing their wares in the U.S. However, continued success of this category hinges on the willingness of other PC vendors to participate and more importantly, consumers from other countries to adopt the new form factor over convertible PCs.