Apple Dominated Tablet Market in Q4 With Shipments Up 40% [Report]

Apple dominated tablet shipments this past holiday quarter with shipments reaching 19.2 million units, up 40% year over year, according to Canalys. The overall PC market (including tablets) also posted a third consecutive quarter of annual growth with shipments reaching 143.7 million, up 35%.

Total shipments for 2020 are said to have reached 458.2 million units, up 17% and the highest volume since 2015. Lenovo led the market in Q4 and 2020 with shipments of 28.8 million and 87 million, respectively. Apple shipped 26.4 million Macs and iPads in Q4 and 81.4 million units for the full year, closing the gap on Lenovo. HP, Dell, and Samsung round out the top five.

Apple furthered its dominance in the tablet market, with Q4 shipments growing 40% to 19.2 million, its best iPad performance since Q4 2014. Samsung maintained second place in the market with 9.9 million tablets shipped, up 41% from Q4 2019. Amazon climbed to third place on the back of strong holiday season demand, shipping 6.5 million tablets. Lenovo was the fastest growing vendor in Q4, increasing sell-in volume by 125% to reach 5.6 million units. Huawei was the only vendor in the top 5 to see shipments decline year-on-year.


“The growth momentum enjoyed by tablets shows just how important easy access to computing power has become in the current time,” said Canalys Analyst Ishan Dutt. “Their versatility across, not just different form factors and price points, but also connectivity options, make them an ideal device across a variety of use-cases, from simple slates for e-learning and content consumption all the way to high-performance detachables for productivity users who are adapting to spending a larger proportion of time at home. Vendors like Microsoft, Dell and Lenovo reacted to the renewed interest in detachable tablets with a slew of announcements at CES 2021 focused on bringing better performance and connectivity to devices for an era of greater flexibility in work arrangements. Moving forward, tablets will be a crucial element of vendors’ PC portfolios and vendors like Apple and Samsung that prioritized the category as others exited will find themselves in an enviable position.”

More details in the full report linked below...

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