Sales of tablet products have taken a slight nose-dive this year, but Apple and Samsung still controlling the lion’s share of the market.
In general, it looks like we’re falling out of love with tablet products, which might be a hard pill for manufacturers to swallow. According to EMEA data from the International Data Corporation (IDC), we bought a measly 10.9 million tablets in the last financial quarter, which is a drop of 8.2% compared with the previous year.
Related: iPad Air review
Between them, Apple and Samsung have about 40% of the market share of tablet sales, leaving everyone else to hoover up the scraps. Apple have a slightly larger share at 22%, which shows that the brand’s devotees are still drawn to sleek-looking products with outlandishly big price tags.
We were impressed when we reviewed the iPad Air earlier this year, finding very little to fault with it, and we were similarly impressed with the Surface Pro 7 when we wrote up our full review.
It looks like these top-tier products are netting Apple and Samsung the big share of tablet sales.
Related: Surface Pro 7 Review
Speaking about future trends, senior research analyst Daniel Goncalves said that the new iPad should continue to prove popular, partly because of its ‘first party keyboard and a new operating system.’ Similarly, he expects the Surface Pro to thrive next year – particularly with business-users.
Speculating on what could be behind the overall drop in tablet sales, International Data Corporation (IDC) put it down to consumers lacking reasons to refresh their devices, as lifecycles continue to increase.
In addition, it’s hard to see why you’d want to fork out an extra few hundred quid on a tablet when most phones are now capable of doing whatever a tablet can, but in a much more compact package.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
