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Tablet sales keep falling

by on01 November 2016


Steve Jobs was completely wrong


Despite what Steve Jobs and his minions in the Tame Apple Press told us, the tablet was not a game changer, and was simply yet another fashion fad which is now going the way of the dodo and the iPod.

According to figures from IDC, the global tablet market, which has been declining for eight straight quarters, has seen yet further reductions in this one.

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that the global tablet market saw a 14.7 percent year-over-year decline in Q3 2016. No major tablet vendor shipped 10 million or more units this past quarter – that includes Apple.

Only 43 million units combined were shipped in Q3 2016 as opposed to 50.5 million units during the same period last year. The figures include the detachable form factors as well which means that tablets with keyboards are also accounted for in these figures.

The sorts of tablets that Jobs told us would take over the world are now being propped up by things like the netbooks they replaced.

Apple retained its position as the top tablet vendor by shipping 9.3 million iPad units in the third quarter of this year. Samsung remains in second place with shipments of 6.5 million units. Both companies saw a year-over-year decline of 6.2 percent and 19.3 percent respectively.

It is the cut price and often subsidised tablets which are doing the best. Amazon demonstrated strong growth by shipping 3.1 million units compared to 0.8 million units during the same period last year, it has seen a YoY growth of 319.9 percent.

Lenovo and Huawei complete the top five with shipments of 2.7 million and 2.4 million units. The top five vendors accounted for 55.8 percent of the entire global tablet market in the third quarter of this year.

What amazes us is that no-one saw this coming. While Jobs was showing the first generation of its keyboardless netbooks, we were saying that they did not have a killer app and were practically useless. Apple fanboys said we were wrong and the proof was how well they sold. This could have been true because they sold quite well initially and then they didn’t.

Last modified on 01 November 2016
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