Worldwide tablet shipment will reach 234.5 million units in 2015, a modest year-over-year increase of 2.1% from 2014, as per latest IDC predictions.
IDC said it expects tablet sales growth of just 2.1% this year, after an increase of 4.4% in 2014 and more than 50% in 2013. The report said that the worldwide tablet shipments are estimated to cross 269.4 million units by 2019. The shipments fell 3.2 percent to 76.1 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, the first ever year-on-year decline since the market’s inception in 2010.
“Despite the growing popularity of phablets, there still remains a portion of the market that wants to use a larger device so they can tailor their experience to the appropriate screen size. Meanwhile, an increasing number of vendors behind small tablets are reducing prices and adopting features like voice calling to entice consumers to purchase their products over competing phablets, making the dynamics of phablets vs voice-capable tablets an interesting one to watch.”
said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker.
Although the outlook has been tempered, IDC still expects low but positive growth for the market in the years to come as demand in the commercial sector increases. In terms of platforms, Android will remain the leader, with close to two-thirds of the market over the course of the forecast. IDC stated that Apple’s iOS is likely the weakest link as its volume share of the market is expected to decline in 2015, reaching levels below that of the past three years. Windows, despite modest adoption to date, is expected to gain significant share over the course of the forecast, growing from 5.1% in 2014 to 14.1% in 2019.
Microsoft is doing a lot of good things right now and we believe, the launch of Windows 10 later this year will not only have a significant impact on Microsoft’s share of the market, but on the industry as a whole,” IDC Research Director Tablets Jean Philippe Bouchard said.