Global tablet market continues to decline, and in the first quarter of 2018 (1Q18), it declined 11.7% year over year with total shipments of 31.7 million units, according to the latest report from International Data Corporation (IDC). Detachable tablets like the Microsoft Surface and iPad Pro saw over 2.9% YoY growth by grabbing 15.3% share, but the traditional slate tablets continued to decline with 26.8 million unit shipments, down 13.9% from the prior year.
Apple continued to be the lead vendor with a market share of 28.8% followed by Samsung which grabbed 16.7% share. Even though Apple has posted 2.1% growth, Samsung has seen 11.4% decline. Huawei has grabbed the third spot with 10.0% share and has also seen 13.0% growth.
Lenovo holds the same fourth spot from last quarter with 6.6% share with 1.8 growth YoY and Amazon has moved from second spot in the previous quarter to fifth with 3.5% share, which is a 49.5% decline, which is expected as the company’s tablet shipments are highly seasonal.
Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers, said:
Chrome OS’ entrance in the detachable market is a welcome change as Google is finally a serious contender from a platform perspective. Google’s tighter control and integration of Chrome OS will allow brands to focus more on hardware design and additional services rather than spending resources reconfiguring Android to work in a detachable setting. Combined with Microsoft’s efforts to run Windows on ARM, the detachable market is poised for strong growth in the near term.