Apple, Samsung lose ground in shrinking tablet market

“The overall growth of the smartphone market was not only driven by the success of premium flagship devices from Samsung, Apple, and others, but more importantly by the abundance of affordable handsets that continue to drive shipments in many key markets”, said Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s mobile phone team, in a prepared statement.

Figures from market analyst IDC suggest that the Apple slate’s market share has dipped below 25% in the face of heightened competition from budget devices.

Lenovo, which ranks first in PCs, is the No. 3 producer of tablets. The survey report by IDC displays a drop down of sales for tablet in the period of April-June, marking a third successive quarter of decreasing sales year-over-year.

Amid lackluster tablet sales, Apple maintained its lead in the worldwide tablet market, amassing a 24.5 percent market share and shipping 10.9 million units in the second quarter. “In the first quarter of the year, Apple and Samsung accounted for 45 percent of the market and this quarter, with the growth of vendors like LG, Huawei, and E FUN, their combined share dropped to 41 percent”. The number three vendor, and explosive growth of China’s Huawei and South Korea’s LG, knotted for fourth. Samsung continued to be the second largest tablet vendor with 7.6 million tablets shipped in the second quarter and 17% market share, a 12% year-over-year unit decline. However it should be noted that this is actually a 17.9% decline from the previous year where Apple commanded 27.7% of the tablet market.

Lenovo rounded out the top five with 16.2 million shipments, up from 15.8 million in 2014’s second quarter. Those companies grew sales by 103.6% and 246.4%, respectively, from less than a billion units to 1.6 billion units each. The IDC notes that the share outside the top five outgrew the market, accounting for 46 percent of all tablets shipped in Q2 2015.