As usual, IDC published the latest reports for the global tablet shipments and the global smartphone shipments in the third quarter. According to the data coming our way from the market research company, the tablet sales reached 42.3 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 9.4%. However, Apple’s iPad is still achieving shipment growth in the shrinking market.
Global Tablet Market
Apple’s iPad shipments in the third quarter are 14.7 million units, an increase from 14 million units in the third quarter of 2020. This is an increase of 4.6% year-on-year, which brings Apple’s share of the tablet market to 34.6%.
Apple is in the leading position in the tablet market with a large advantage; Samsung ranked second with a 17.7% market share; Amazon ranked third with an 11.1% market share. By the way, tablet shipments of Samsung and Amazon dropped by 11.1% and 13.3% year-on-year, respectively.
“Many schools and governments blew out their budgets to provide devices for remote learning and even consumers aggressively purchased devices for learning in 2020. As a result, some saturation in the education market is expected in the near term,” said Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. “This directly impacts Chromebooks and even tablets to some extent”. Especially, it’s noticeable in developed markets such as the U.S. and Western Europe. However, Chromebooks continue to increase their footprint in emerging markets such as Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa, but sales in these regions account for less than 13% of the overall Chromebook volume and hence are far from moving the global market.”
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Apple seems to be relatively unaffected by the decline in tablet sales. But IDC pointed out that the relaxation of the new coronavirus epidemic ban around the world has led to increased spending in other categories. The latter seems to weaken the demand for tablets and Chromebooks.
However, Apple expects that due to continued supply chain constraints, iPad shipments will not increase in the fourth quarter.
Global Smartphone Shipments
In the third quarter of 2021, global smartphone shipments were 330 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%.
In the third quarter of 2021, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China and Japan) saw the largest declines, at -23.2% and -11.6%, respectively. Regions such as the United States, Western Europe, and China have a much smaller decline. They are -0.2%, -4.6%, and -4.4%, respectively. That’s because the top manufacturers gave higher priority to these regions.
In terms of vendor share, Samsung tops the list with 69 million units shipped and 20.8% market share. Apple re-ranked second with a shipment of 50.4 million units and a market share of 15.2%. The Cupertino-based company achieved remarkable year-on-year growth of 20.8%. Xiaomi occupies third place with a market share of 13.4% and shipments of 44.3 million units. The year-on-year decrease is 4.6%. VIVO and OPPO tied for fourth place, with shipments of 33.3 million units and 33.2 million units, respectively. Their market shares are 10.1% and 10.0%. Vivo’s shipments increased by 5.8% year-on-year, while OPPO got an increase of 8.6% year-on-year in the quarter.
