According to the latest IDC report, the worldwide tablet market is expected to see a massive deceleration in 2014 with year-over-year growth slowing to 7.2%, down from 52.5% in 2013.The main offender behind this is declining sales of Apple Inc.’s iPad, with 2014 set to be the first full year of decline for iPad sales, IDC said. The report also noted that device lifecycles for tablets continue to lengthen, ever more approaching those of PCs rather than smartphones.
Ryan Reith, Program Director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers said that in the early stages of the tablet market, device lifecycles were expected to resemble those of smartphones, with replacement occurring every 2-3 years. What has played out instead is that many tablet owners are holding onto their devices for more than 3 years and in some instances more than 4 years.
Ryan Reith believes the two major drivers for longer than expected tablet lifecycles are legacy software support for older products, especially within iOS, and the increased use of smartphones for a variety of computing tasks.
If IDC numbers are carefully observed, it appears Android tablets are propping the market up. Sales for iPads will fall by 12.7 percent in 2014, down to 64.9 million units while sales of Android tablets will grow by 16 percent to 159.5 million units shipped.
According to the IDC’s numbers, Windows tablets will see growth of 67.7 percent for this year. Microsoft is expected to ship only 10.9 million units, representing a meagre 4.6 percent market share of the total 235.7 million tablets forecast to ship by the end of 2014.
Despite latest advances in the tablet market, shipments of 2-in-1 devices are only expected to reach 8.7 million units in 2014, which is just 4% of the total tablet plus 2-in-1 market. A large reason for the relatively small uptake has been consumer hesitancy around the Windows 8 platform, which the majority of 2-in-1 devices are built upon.
The IDC report predicts a negative compound annual growth rate for iPad sales between 2014 and 2018 at -1.1 percent. In comparison, it predicts 5.9 percent for Android tablets and 38.1 percent for Windows tablets over the same period.
