Beancounters at IDC claim that a flood of cheap tablets are killing off an already dying technology branch.
In a new report, IDC said that 43 million tablets shipped in Q3 2016 but that figure was actually the bad news. The overall market declined 14.3 percent year-on-year, because of poor sales at the top end of the market. Basically consumers switching to cheap tablets with lower margins.
While there is a .8 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in shipments as vendors get ready for the holiday quarter. the market’s pants.
Amazon with its Fire tablets were the only tablets to see significant growth. These were up 320 percent year-on-year but still only taking 7.3 percent of the market. Huawei sales increased 28.4 percent to 5.6 percent of the market.
Apple’s shipments fell 6.2 percent and Lenovo was down 10.8 percent. Samsung fell 19.3 percent.
| Vendor | 3Q16 Unit Shipments | 3Q16 Market Share | 3Q15 Unit Shipments | 3Q15 Market Share | Year-Over-Year Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 9.3 | 21.50% | 9.9 | 19.60% | -6.20% |
| Samsung | 6.5 | 15.10% | 8.1 | 16.00% | -19.30% |
| Amazon | 3.1 | 7.30% | 0.8 | 1.50% | 319.90% |
| Lenovo | 2.7 | 6.30% | 3.1 | 6.00% | -10.80% |
| Huawei | 2.4 | 5.60% | 1.9 | 3.70% | 28.40% |
| Others | 19 | 44.20% | 26.9 | 53.20% | -29.20% |
| Total | 43 | 100.00% | 50.5 | 100.00% | -14.70% |
IDC senior research analyst Jitesh Ubrani said that they -$200 tablets were spoiling the market for everyone.
He said that the “The race to the bottom is something we have already experienced with slates and it may prove detrimental to the market in the long run as detachables could easily be seen as disposable devices rather than potential PC replacements”
