has been comfortably leading the global tablet market for… as long as we can remember, the sales numbers of the tech giant’s iPad portfolio are not what they used to be a few years back. That’s actually true for the entire industry, which thrived in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling once people started returning to traditional offices and classrooms and finally showing
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Every major tablet brand is on the rise
That’s right, the market is up from 28.2 million unit shipments in Q2 2023 to 34.4 mil between April and June of this year, with all top five vendors enjoying solid or absolutely stellar year-over-year growth. In first place, Apple claims a nice and juicy 35.8 percent slice of the worldwide pie, which is actually down from a 37 percent share this time last year.
But quarterly iPad shipments have managed to jump from 10.4 to 12.3 million, and there are no prizes for guessing what models are primarily responsible for that healthy progress. Yes, it appears that the latest (and inarguably greatest) iPad Pros and Airs have connected with audiences around the world… apart from China.
The largest smartphone and tablet market out there unsurprisingly remains devoted to homebrewed products from brands like Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi. Those are the world’s third, fourth, and fifth-biggest tablet vendors right now (in that order), and surprisingly (or not), the smallest of the three scored the largest growth of the top five in Q2 2024, nearly doubling its sales from the same period of last year.
What’s next for the recovering tablet market?
The 2021-released iPad mini 6 is still without a sequel. | Image Credit — PhoneArena
For their part, the likes of Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi are expected to keep their focus on expanding their successful low to mid-end devices with reasonable prices to new markets and wider audiences. Finally, Samsung is likely to remain faithful to a more balanced strategy aiming to cover all segments and target audiences with a rich and diverse product portfolio.
