RaduTyrsina
News Team
At its latest earnings call conference, it was disclosed that iPad sales were down for the second consecutive quarter, hitting 13.28 million units in the three-month period. Compared to to the same period a year ago, this represents a decline of 9.2 percent from 14.6 million.
However, despite that, it seems that Apple is maintaining its top position in worldwide tablet sales. According to data coming from IDC, Apple was able to maintain its lead over Samsung with 26.9% of the market, which has decreased from 33% in 2013.
Samsung saw its market share slip to 17.2% in the second quarter, being followed by Lenovo on the third spot after it has surpassed Asus. Lenovo has seen the biggest year-over-year growth from the top 5, increasing its market share from 3.3% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.9% in 2Q 2014.
Acer has seen the biggest decrease, with its market share declining from 3.4% to just 2%. However, overall, the worldwide tablet grew 11.0% year over year in the second quarter of 2014 with shipments reaching 49.3 million units, says the International Data Corporation in its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker report.
Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC Research Director for Tablets, said the following:
"As we indicated last quarter, the market is still being impacted by the rise of large-screen smartphones and longer than anticipated ownership cycles. We can also attribute the market deceleration to slow commercial adoption of tablets. Despite this trend, we believe that stronger commercial demand for tablets in the second half of 2014 will help the market grow and that we will see more enterprise-specific offerings, as illustrated by the Apple and IBM partnership, come to market."
Referring to slowing down iPad sales, Tim Cook said that he sees possibilities for growth in the enterprise market.
“When we dig into it though our market share in the commercial sector in the US is good, it’s 76%, the penetration in business is low, it’s only 20. If you looked at the penetration of notebooks in business it would be over 60. We think there is a substantial upside in business…The market is bifurcated on iPad. In the BRIC countries, iPad did extremely well. The growth was very high. China it was in the 50’s, the middle east it was in the 60’s. In the developed countries like the US, the market is clearly weaker there…”
Source: IDC
