Tablet Shipments Recorded 5th Straight Quarter of Growth: SA

Hybrid work and virtual learning drove tablet shipments to their fifth straight quarter of year-over-year unit growth in Q2, but supply constraints impeded major vendors from meeting the elevated demand, “raising questions about what the second half of the year will bring,” reported Strategy Analytics Thursday. Vendors shipped 45.2 million tablets globally in Q2, about flat compared with Q1, but up about 5% from the 2020 quarter, said SA. Apple shipped 15.8 million iPads in the quarter for 11% growth from a year earlier, and raised its market-leading global share 1.8 points to 35%, it said. Samsung, the top Android tablets vendor, shipped 8.2 million tablets for 19% year-over-year growth, raising its share 2.1 points to 18%. “If higher component and transportation costs make their way into tablet price tags as expected, the competitive environment for mobile computing devices will be intense” in 2021's second half, said SA analyst Eric Smith.