On February 2, market research agency IDC released the 2021 annual statistics of the tablet and Chromebook markets, and in the context of the easing of the new crown epidemic, tablet shipments are slowing down, although they have increased. However, 2021 was still a fairly positive year for manufacturers, with total shipments up 3.2 percent to 168.8 million units.
IDC noted that the fourth quarter of 2021, the peak of shipments since 2016, also clearly shows that demand in the tablet and Chromebook market has slowed somewhat.
First, tablet shipments fell to 46 million units in the fourth quarter of 2021, the first decline since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Second, almost all of the top five manufacturers have seen negative year-over-year growth (Amazon is an exception). Samsung, Lenovo, and Huawei have suffered a relatively heavy blow, but Apple is still the biggest player in the field.
It's important to note that while tablet shipments didn't start to decline until the last quarter of 2021, Chromebooks suffered an even sharper decline, plunging 63.6 percent in the fourth quarter alone.
The good news is that the strong performance at the beginning of the year still allowed it to achieve 13.5% growth in the whole year of 2021, with the total market sales reaching 37 million units, up from 32.6 million units in 2020 and about 15 million units in 2019.
As for the reasons for the slowdown in growth, part of it can be attributed to the saturation of the US and European markets. Even if there is still demand in emerging markets, this is clearly not enough to reverse the decline.
Not to mention that Chromebooks suffered a double whammy of chip supply shortages last year, and many manufacturers switched to more profitable Windows PCs as a result.
According to a new research report released by another research agency, Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of 2021 fell by 25% year-on-year, which may be due to the current tight supply of electronic parts.
According to the data in the report, Apple's iPad shipments in the fourth quarter of 2021 fell 22% year-on-year to 14.6 million units, but the global market share rose 1 percentage point to 31%.
Eric Smith, director of connected computing services at Strategy Analytics, said: "Last year's pre-holiday quarter was a difficult quarter to compare, plus severe supply constraints affecting tablet manufacturers, and overall a disappointing quarter. It's maddening that by the end of 2021, demand will far outweigh supply, hindering higher yields for manufacturers. There are signs that supply shortages begin to ease in 2022, but we think this won't end until after the summer. ”