A new month is upon us and with it comes news about quarterly results and yearly results. Samsung managed to grow for the first time in 19 quarters and Apple also grew double digits. The info comes from Strategy Analytics and sheds clear light on the current state of the slate market.
Turns out that a few big vendors have pretty solid holidays at the end of 2018. As mentioned above Samsung posted its first global quarterly shipment growth since 2014 in the tablet area. Apple, Huawei and Microsoft also did fine, with growth for both that quarter and the full year. The tablet market is starting to show signs of recovery.
However, the segment as a whole, the global tablet market shipments contracted by 1% in Q4 2018. It ended the year 6% lower than the previous time frame, at 173.8 million units. Apple had the lion’s share in Q4 2018, with 14.5 million units sold, up from 13.2 million in Q4 2017. Samsung is second placed, with 7.5 million, up from 7 million a year before.
Amazon is third placed, with 5.5 million, the same as 2017, while Huawei is fourth with 4.6 million, a 0.6 million bump. Android dominates the tablet OS, with 32.9 million units in Q4 and 104.6 million for the full year. That last number is almost a 10 million unit drop from 2017. We’re supposed to be in the middle of a PC refresh cycle and detachables are also doing fine.
Windows had a share of 12.9% in Q4 2018 and 13.8% for the full year.
