Despite the phablet-impact, the worldwide tablet market grew 11 percent year-over-year reaching 49.3 million shipments in second quarter of this year, noted research firm IDC in its preliminary report. There was however a slight decline in the shipments on the quarterly basis.
“As we indicated last quarter, the market is still being impacted by the rise of large-screen smartphones and longer than anticipated ownership cycles. We can also attribute the market deceleration to slow commercial adoption of tablets. Despite this trend, we believe that stronger commercial demand for tablets in the second half of 2014 will help the market grow and that we will see more enterprise-specific offerings, as illustrated by the Apple and IBM partnership, come to market,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC Research Director for Tablets.
Apple continues to remain on the top of the vendor-wise tablet shipments but its shipments declined from last year. Samsung, at the second spot, saw slight year-over-year growth but Chinese manufacturer Lenovo was the biggest gainer among the top five tablet vendors with 64.7 percent growth.
In other tablet vendors, Asus’ tablet shipments were up around 13 percent, however Acer saw a major decline.
“Until recently, Apple, and to a lesser extent Samsung, have been sitting at the top of the market, minimally impacted by the progress from competitors. Now we are seeing growth amongst the smaller vendors and a levelling of shares across more vendors as the market enters a new phase,” ,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker.
We don’t expect any major changes in the remaining part of the year and the tablet shipments are expected to see a modest rise, inline with the 11 percent growth in Q2.
