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Tablet market growth slows

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 12 Jan 2015
The collapse of the tablet market in 2014 was alarming, says Gartner.
The collapse of the tablet market in 2014 was alarming, says Gartner.

Although the tablet market has enjoyed a purple patch over the past couple of years, the fortunes will change in 2015.

Analyst firm, Gartner, says the global tablet market is not returning to the levels of growth seen in the last four years, as demand for tablets will continue to be slow in 2015.

The firm says tablet sales growth is slowing as new hardware buyers turn to alternative devices and existing users extend the lifetime of their tablets.

According to Gartner, worldwide tablet sales will reach 233 million units in 2015, an 8% increase from 2014. Last year, growth of tablet sales slumped to 4.3%, down from 2013 when shipments were up 68% from the previous year.

"The collapse of the tablet market in 2014 was alarming," says Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "In the last two years, global sales of tablets were growing in double-digits. The steep drop can be explained by several factors.

"One is that the lifetime of tablets is being extended - they are shared out among family members, and software upgrades, especially for iOS devices, keep the tablets current. Another factor includes the lack of innovation in hardware which prevents consumers from upgrading."

Worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) for 2015 are estimated to reach 2.5 billion units, an increase of 3.9% over 2014, says Gartner.

It explains the Ultramobile Premium category includes devices such as Microsoft's Windows 8, Intel x86 products and Apple's MacBook Air, while the tablets category includes devices such as iPad, iPad Mini, Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5, Nexus 7 and Acer Iconia Tab 8.

Traditional PCs will reach 259 million units in 2015, with the overall PC market set to ship 321 million units, Gartner predicts.

The mobile phone segment is on pace to grow 3.7% in 2015 and reach two billion units in 2016.

"The smartphone market is becoming polarised between the high- and low-end market price points," says Annette Zimmermann, research director at Gartner. "On one hand, the premium phone with an average selling price of $447 in 2014 saw growth dominated by iOS, and on the other end of the spectrum you have Android and other open OS phones' growth area in the basic phone segment, where the average phone costs $100. For the midrange smartphones, the market opportunity is becoming increasingly limited."

In the operating system market, Android surpassed a billion shipments of devices in 2014, and will continue to grow at a double-digit pace in 2015, with a 26% increase year over year.

"From 2015, we expect Windows to grow faster than iOS, as the PC market stabilises and the challenge for the next iPhone to find significant growth becomes greater, narrowing the gap between the two operating systems," says Atwal.

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