The smartphone industry may be seeing a flat growth but as for the tablet business, numbers are going down. Nothing has improved the past third quarter and we don’t think it will change anytime soon. There is still hope but companies need to think of something unique and interesting or one that will make more people buy a new tablet.
We know one factor why tablets aren’t selling as much is because of the big smartphones being introduced left and right. There are those that we can already consider as phablets because of the display size. These phone-tablets give us a reason why a tablet is no longer needed. Of course, there are still people who prefer such.
The past quarter, about 40 million tablets have shipped globally. This information is according to IDC (International Data Corporation) who also said the number marks a 5.4% decline year on year. The market is definitely on a decline and the IDC report says this is already the twelfth consecutive quarter that we’re seeing the numbers down.
Demand for smartphones is still growing so the gap between phones and tablets are widening. We used to think computers can be replaced by tablets but that’s not the case now. Traditional PCs are still doing well. The detachable tablet market is no different. Well, it’s not on a decline but growth is slow. There is also the convertible which is actually a separate category. An IDC survey reveals more people prefer a convertible compared to a detachable.
Still on top of the tablet market is Apple with 10.2 million iPads shipped and with about 25.8% share of the market. Samsung follows with six million tablets while Amazon comes in third place with 4.4 million units. Both Huawei and Lenovo sold 3 million tablets (each). Different brands make up for 13.3 million or about 33.5% of the market.
SOURCE: IDC
I absolutely believe that tablet sales would improve if there were more high end tablets besides Apple. I have still been waiting for an LTE Tab S3- NOT Verizon…
One problem with Android tablets is that not all apps are optimized for tablets. In the Play Store, I’ve seen many say Optimized for Phones. This means the app will work on the tablet, it may look right.
Also, unfortunately Google has not come out with a new 7 or 8 inch tablet since the 2013 Nexus 7.
Can you name one app? We have 5 Android tablets and I’ve never seen an app that only works fine on my phone but not tablet. Agree it would be nice to see a Nexus 7 update. I’ve upgraded to a LineageOS Oreo and it runs very smooth for such an old tablet.
There is not a single decent tablet in the Android market that is either crappy or not overprice for poor features. I’ve been waiting to buy two 8-9″ tablets for two years now and there is nothing that hits at least 80% of my spots:
1. 128GB-256GB
2. High resolution screen
3. Decent speakers
4. Android updates
5. Multi-user support (something that Scamsung strips from all its phones)
6. None of the heavy-handed TouchWiz bullshit or just LineageOS compatible