Apple manages to keep iPad at the top of marketshare list for 3Q14
iPad, the king of tablets has continued its stay at that top of marketshare for another quarter but this time, it barely hung in there. With 22.8% of marketshare, Apple stayed at no.1 position though it registered negative growth YoY. Apple had 29.2% of market share in 3Q2013. The surprise though is that an unknown brand RCA pulled market share from Apple, Samsung, ASUS (the top three vendors). RCA and Lenovo were the only brands in top 5 to register positive market share growth. This is mainly due to ‘back to school’ discounts and strong retail chain supply from RCA.
“Not only is the US market one of the largest for tablets, but third quarter results also indicate that this is where the growth is,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC Research Director for Tablets. “We saw Verizon continuing to sell connected tablets at a fast pace, a strategy that we believe other carriers will replicate in following quarters. We also saw RCA enter the top 5, impacting the entire US market and worldwide ranking with one large deal linked to back-to-school and channel fill ahead of Black Friday. Those two elements resulted in the US tablet market growing at 18.5% year-over-year compared to the worldwide market growing at 11.5% annually.”
“Although the low-cost vendors are moving a lot of volume, the top vendors, like Apple, continue to rake in the dollars,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. “A sub-$100 tablet simply isn’t sustainable—Apple knows this—and it’s likely the reason they aren’t concerned with market share erosion.”
