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Apple's iPad retained the dominant share of the tablet industry in the first quarter of 2021 as the product segment grew more than 50% year-over-year.
Total shipments of tablets reached 39.9 million units in Q1 2021, representing year-over-year growth of 55.2%, according to new data from analysis firm IDC. The firm says growth of this magnitude hasn't been seen since 2013.
Among tablet makers, Apple kept the top spot. The Cupertino company shipped an estimated 12.7 million iPad units during the first quarter, up 64.3% year-over-year. Apple had a 31.7% share of the market, up from 30% in Q1 2020.
Samsung ranked second with an estimated 8 million tablet shipments and 20% of the market. Lenovo came in third with 3.8 million shipments, Amazon came in fourth with 3.5 million shipments, and Huawei clocked fifth with 2.7 million shipments.
"While vaccine rollouts and businesses returning to offices may slow down the work-from-home trend, we are still far from returning to 'normal' working conditions and hence the demand for tablets, especially detachables, is expected to continue for a while," said IDC research analyst Anuroopa Nataraj.
IDC notes that tablets used be the top choice in the education market, but Chromebooks are quickly catching up in the U.S., Western Europe, and most recently, in Japan.
Apple no longer reports individual unit sales for its products. However, during its last earnings call, the company said that iPad revenue grew 78.7% to $7.8 billion in the March quarter.
The company also recently announced two new iPad Pro models equipped with M1 chips and a new Liquid Retina XDR display on the 12.9-inch model. Preorders opened on Friday and the devices will ship in the second half of May.
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7 Comments
If you want to do real work on a tablet you get an iPad, end of story. The ‘competition’ are just media playback devices.
I use iPad for MS office when not at my desk, true. We have it set up to provide disaster service recording (mapping, photographing, documenting, monitoring, reporting) where it has replaced trimbles, which in the past were go to devices for that purpose but are very limited compared with an ipad. Any GPS capable device can do that though, although the large screen of the iPad is the best for that purpose.
At home the iPad has become my main device, replacing my iMac when it died. I use it for consumption, no doubt about it, but also the small amount of photo and video editing I might do, managing my home network, and general comms. And most email with work as it is quicker and easier than going to the bag for the work laptop. Heck I even answer the phone at home on it, rather than look for my iPhone.
anyway, LKrupp’s point is that Ipad has a myriad of apps written specifically for it. Competitor tablets mostly rely on phone apps scaled up to the larger screen. It ain’t pretty. It is jarring on a rare occasion trying to use an iPhone only app on an iPad. That is the usual experience on a competitor product for anything other than consumption.