Although tablets have been pretty much dropping all over the world from 2014 onwards, there were some bastions where the slates were pretty strong. Among them there’s Japan, that finally adhered to the global trend and registered its first drop in 2016.
There were 8.51 million slates shipped in Japan last year, a 9.8% decrease on year. This marks the first annual decrease, according to Japanese MM Research Institute. Apple got 41% of shipments, followed by Huawei Technologies (21.6%), NEC/Lenovo (8.5%) and ASUS (5.4%). As far as business models go, enterprises had to compensate for all sorts of UI, apps and security mechanisms, so extra costs were taken into account.
The education segment is probably the only one grower in Japan’s tablet market. Although the source doesn’t mention it, I bet that the 2 in 1 and detachables also did pretty well in Japan. With a new Surface model and possibly new iPads ready for later this year, we could see a recovery of the nipon market.
