Huawei keeps taking hits as the US sanctions affect its business and now the tablet segment is the one with problems. A report is saying that Huawei tablet shipments are expected to decline in 2021, on account of US sanctions. The company isn’t able to source CPUs from Qualcomm or MediaTek or even do outsourcing of proprietary chips to foundries like TSMC.
A report from Digitimes claims that Huawei, Samsung and Apple are the top tablet brands in the world right now. Huawei ships its tablets only in China, Europe and some Southeast Asian markets, with 60% of volumes going to China. The other firms also do business in the West, so they have an upper hand. Right now, Apple has a market share of 42% in the Chinese tablet segment, while Huawei holds 33% and Microsoft and Lenovo have 3.5% and 3% respectively.
The report claims that Huawei has inventory left till the second quarter of 2021. The company hasn’t yet acquired CPUs from Intel and AMD, so the future is uncertain, but that’s the laptop segment. Lower end Huawei tablets could receive the CPUs made by Chinese company SMIC, which already provides the Kirin 710A on the Huawei P Smart 2021. Estimations show that Huawei is expected to lose 22% of its tablet market share in2021, while Apple will gain from it, rising to 46.4%.
Microsoft will grow to 4% and Lenovo to 9.6%. The decrease will happen particularly in non China markets and in some Asia Pacific areas and Europe Samsung will take over the market share. Samsung’s volume will pick up 10% thanks to the shifted demand from Huawei and the strategy of pushing entry level tablets by outsourcing production to Chinese ODMs. Lenovo is also prone for a 20% year on year growth.
