You may not remember this now, but the start of the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020 was a flourishing period for all major tablet vendors, which saw their global shipment figures explode all of a sudden as millions of people needed to find quick, easy, and, in most cases, affordable ways to move their work from the office to their homes.
But that rampant demand gradually declined as the world began to return to "traditional" work habits... before bouncing back last year. That's right, tablet sales jumped by a solid 10 percent in 2025 from 2024, and it's not hard to guess what brand was primarily responsible for this somewhat unexpected growth (especially during the final three months of the year).
Bow to the king!
While Apple had to fight tooth and nail against Samsung until the very end of 2025 to top the smartphone vendor hierarchy, there's a good chance the Cupertino-based tech giant could have won the title in the tablet market even if no new iPads saw daylight last year.
That's a huge win for Apple and a pretty embarrassing decline for Samsung given the tablet market's growth as a whole.
That was obviously not the case, and the A16 Bionic-powered iPad 11 and the latest l1 and 13-inch iPad Pros with Apple M5 inside made a crucial contribution to their manufacturer's dominant 19.6 million unit sales total of Q4 2025.
Back in Q4 2024, Apple "only" shipped 16.8 million iPads around the world, which was already enough for an impressive 42.3 percent slice of the pie, so naturally, that share went even higher between October and December of last year. Specifically, to 44.9 percent, which makes me wonder if the time will soon come to see one in every two tablets sold worldwide be an iPad.
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45 percent, mind you, was a significantly better result than Apple's tablet market share in Q1, Q2, and Q3 2025 as well, but throughout the year, the company had no serious competition for the global throne. And unfortunately for Samsung, that's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Galaxy tablets, in case you're wondering, were down a worrying 9.2 percent year-over-year in the last quarter of 2024, although for the time being, Samsung's silver medal standing is not under threat either.
Could Lenovo (eventually) beat Samsung?
Anything is possible in the tech industry (just ask Nokia or LG), but while Lenovo managed to improve its Q4 sales by an astounding 36.2 percent between 2024 and 2025, Samsung continues to hold a (fairly) comfortable advantage of nearly 6 percent in share over the market's bronze medalist.
Of course, that gap was a lot larger this time last year, so if Lenovo can sustain its market-leading growth going forward... truly anything is possible. The problem is tablet sales on the whole are expected to decline in 2026, and it's hard to imagine that one brand will be able to not just weather the storm but boost its numbers at the rate needed to overtake Samsung.
Lenovo jumped from fourth to third place in Q3 2025, ending the year on the podium.
Still, Lenovo should be mighty proud of what it achieved in 2025, stealing the number three spot in the vendor chart away from Huawei and keeping Xiaomi at bay. Those are another two brands that managed to improve their shipments last year compared to 2024, although their improvements were nowhere near as impressive as Lenovo's aforementioned 36.2 percent progress, standing at 14.8 and 10.1 percent, respectively, in Q4.
Interestingly, the Q4 2025 and the full-year vendor rankings are said to be the same, even though Lenovo only climbed on the podium in Q3, while Xiaomi dropped from third place in Q1 to fifth in Q2 (and then Q3 and Q4).
Do we even need tablets anymore?
That's something I expect a lot of people to wonder once Apple's first foldable iPhone finally comes out, but "conventional" tablets like the aforementioned iPad (11th Gen) are obviously guaranteed to retain much of their mainstream appeal for years to come for a very simple reason - affordability.
The tablet market is very close to its 2020 peak, but likely to shrink in 2026.
Still, if foldables do blow up in the near future as many analysts expect, there's clearly a good chance that both "traditional" phones and tablets will be hurt as a direct consequence, and a few top vendors may need to rethink their product portfolios. Yes, I'm looking at you, Samsung, and your excessively priced and insufficiently powerful Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S11 Ultra.
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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