The Apple iPad remained the most popular tablet in the world during Q1; Samsung draws nearer

Even though Apple shipped 13% fewer iPad tablets year-over-year globally during the first calendar quarter, the iPad remained the most popular tablet in the world. 8.9 million iOS powered tablets were delivered during the first three months of this year, compared to the 10.3 million shipped during the same quarter of 2016. The iPad currently owns 24.6% of the worldwide tablet market. For Apple, this was the 13th straight quarter with lower year-over-year iPad shipments. Thanks to the Apple iPad Pro, Apple now is on top of the detachable tablet market despite the use of a mobile OS. Others in that niche segment, like the Surface Pro 4, ship with Windows pre-installed. 

Samsung was second with 6 million tablets shipped in the first quarter, a 1.1% decline from the number of slates it shipped during the same period last year. With Sammy accounting for 16.5% of the worldwide tablet market, it now trails Apple by just 8.1 percentage points, down from the 10.7 percentage points gap seen last year. The manufacturer that had the best first quarter in the tablet market was Huawei. The latter was third in global tablet shipments for the period with 2.7 million units delivered. That was a strong 31.7% increase in deliveries over the first quarter of 2016. Huawei now owns 7.4% of the worldwide tablet market.

Amazon was fourth with a 6% slice of the global tablet pie as it shipped 2.2 million slates in the period. And rounding out the top five was Lenovo. With 2.1 million tablets delivered from January through March of this year, the company closed out the quarter with 5.7% of the tablet market.

Overall, 36.2 million tablets were shipped during the first quarter of 2017, down 8.5% from the 39.6 million that were in transit during the previous year. That makes it ten consecutive quarters with a year-over-decline. The tablet market is suffering because unlike the smartphone industry, there are fewer reasons to upgrade after a year or two. In  addition, the larger size of smartphone screens makes it less imperative for many to shell out the cash to buy a tablet.

source: IDC via AppleInsider