What you need to know
- The overall tablet market has experienced its first decline in the last five quarters.
- The iPad, however, grew its market share by 4.6%.
The iPad just keeps solidifying its place as the go-to tablet in the world.
New data from analytics firm IDC shows that, after five quarters of growth that was fueled by remote work and remote learning, the tablet industry is starting to cool off. According to the research, both the Chromebook and tablet market saw their first decline since the pandemic started.
Anuroopa Nataraj, a senior research analyst with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said that schools and governments spent all of the money they were going to on the devices by now.
"Many schools and governments blew out their budgets to provide devices for remote learning and even consumers aggressively purchased devices for learning in 2020. As a result, some saturation in the education market is expected in the near term. This directly impacts Chromebooks and even tablets to some extent, especially in developed markets such as the U.S. and Western Europe, due to high volumes in the preceding quarters. However, Chromebooks continue to increase their footprint in emerging markets such as Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa, but sales in these regions account for less than 13% of the overall Chromebook volume and hence are far from moving the global market."
While the overall tablet market shrank by 9.4% year-over-year, Apple's iPad increased its market share by 4.6% year-over-year. Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said that decreased demand and supply chain issues both affected the overall tablet market this quarter.
"Though reduced demand is largely to blame to for the declines in these categories, limited supply has also been a factor. The combination of these two factors is likely to create opportunity for PC makers as shared components, production capacity, and freight availability could be shifted to other categories such as Windows notebooks or perhaps gaming PCs, which continue to see higher demand and greater profitability."
Apple shipped a number of updates to its iPad this fall, including the 9th generation iPad and redesigned 6th generation iPad mini.
Bottom line: Apple's iPad mini 6 packs so much power into its small chassis, meaning it will be future-proofed for years to come. If you need portability and still want a top-notch tablet experience, the iPad mini is the only real choice.
