IDC Trims 5-Year Tablet Forecast, Says It Expects Windows To Gain on iOS

International Data Corp. scaled back its five-year forecast for the tablet category, the research firm said Thursday. Worldwide shipments are expected to reach 234.5 million units this year, a "modest” year-over-year increase of 2.1 percent, IDC said. The researcher expects “low but positive growth” for the market in coming years on demand from the commercial sector and as “Microsoft slowly gains a foothold.” While phablets are becoming more popular, a portion of the consumer market still wants customization options of a larger screen size, analyst Jitesh Ubrani said. Vendors are cutting prices on smaller tablets and adopting features such as voice calling to compete against phablets, Ubrani said. Android will continue as platform leader with a two-thirds share of the tablet market over the forecast period, IDC said. It called iOS the “weakest link” in the category with share expected to decline this year to levels beneath those of the past three years. Windows is expected to gain “significant share” over the forecast period, growing from 5.1 percent last year to 14.1 percent in 2019, IDC said. "Microsoft is doing a lot of good things right now,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC research director-tablets. The launch of Windows 10 later this year will boost Microsoft’s share and affect the industry as a whole, Bouchard said. "There is an appetite for a platform that can provide a productivity experience that remains consistent across multiple form factors and device types,” and Microsoft is "well positioned to capture some of that demand,” he said.