With smartphone sales falling retailers and carriers are now having to confront a significant fall in tablet sales with new research indicating that in the last quarter shipments of tablets fell 30%.
Also compounding the problem is margin erosions with several vendors now selling sub $100 7″ tablets. Shortly retailers in Australia will have access to the Polaroid tablet range which in Europe is the #1 tablet brand and in the USA #2.
The Polaroid 7-inch Internet tablet runs Android 4.0 and is set to go on sale in Australia for around $125. The tablet houses a Cortex A8 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded to 32GB via the tablet’s built-in microSD card slot.
It also includes a Micro-USB port and built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The screen sports an 800×480 pixel display and it has a front-facing video camera.
DigiTimes who poll manufacturers of tablets reports that global tablet shipments reached only 58.56 million units in the first quarter of 2014, down almost 30% sequentially, but up 4.6% year on year despite Samsung Electronics trying to boost both its high-end and entry-level tablet shipments and Lenovo pushing shipments to meet its fiscal 2013 targets.
This week Apple reported that iPad sales had fallen 16% in the last quarter.
Shipments of iPads suffered both year on-year and sequential drops to reach 15.85 million units in the first quarter.
Non-iPad tablet shipments were 22.31 million units, down 20% sequentially, but up over 30% on year due to strong demand for Samsung, Lenovo and Asustek’s Windows-based models.
White-box tablet shipments reached only 20.4 million units due to seasonality and labor shortages during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Apple and Samsung remained the top-two vendors in the first quarter, but the two players’ market share gap was less than 6pp. Lenovo was the third-largest vendor, followed closely by Asustek Computer in fourth. Amazon and Google dropped to number seven and ten.
Taiwan ODMs shipped 22.15 million tablets together in the first quarter, accounting for less than 60% of global shipments.
The largest maker, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), and second-largest Pegatron Technology both suffered significant shipment drops due to lower-than-expected demand for iPad.
Quanta saw increased shipments in the quarter because of Asustek’s T100 tablet, and returned to being the third-largest maker in Taiwan. Compal Electronics’ shipments suffered a sharp decline because Amazon’s Kindle Fire range is approaching the end of its lifecycle, while Acer is turning to cooperate with China-based makers, Digitimes Research’s figures showed.
