IDC: Worldwide Tablet Growth Expected to Slow to 7.2% in 2014 Along With First Year of iPad Decline
Well, this is not a good news for Apple and all those companies relying on heavy tablet sales. In the year 2013, the year over year growth for tablets was 52.5% but this year, YoY growth plummeted to 7.2%. This is a sign of saturation and market finally maturing. Ironically, this is the first full year that Apple iPad shipments registered a decline. While Android is estimated to grab 67.7% of marketshare(growth up YoY by 16%), iOS will take 27.5% of marketshare (registering 12.7% decline). Windows tablets will grab 4.6% of marketshare (growth up by 67.3%).
“The tablet market continues to be impacted by a few major trends happening in relevant markets,” said Ryan Reith, Program Director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers. “In the early stages of the tablet market, device lifecycles were expected to resemble those of smartphones, with replacement occurring every 2-3 years. What has played out instead is that many tablet owners are holding onto their devices for more than 3 years and in some instances more than 4 years. We believe the two major drivers for longer than expected tablet lifecycles are legacy software support for older products, especially within iOS, and the increased use of smartphones for a variety of computing tasks.”
As expected, emerging markets registered healthy growth, with 11.5% YoY growth and took over the lead with 50.6% of marketshare while mature markets only registered 3.1% of growth, with 49.4% of marketshare.
“We need to look at how the tablet ecosystem is answering these challenges, and right now we see a lot of pressure on tablet prices and an influx of entry-level products, which ultimately serves Android really well,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, Research Director for Tablets. “But we also see tablet manufacturers trying to offset this price pressure by focusing on larger screens and cellular-enabled tablets. The next six months should be really interesting.”
