Although Apple and Samsung lead the market for tablet sales, there’s an increasing battle for third place. That’s the conclusion of a new report from ABI Research.
It says competition for the space behind Apple and Samsung is currently between Lenovo, Amazon, Asus and other ‘emerging’ vendors.
ABI’s figures suggest that Lenovo is currently placed to take third place; shipping 21 million tablets in 2019 to claim 7.3% of the overall market.
In fact, the leading two companies are currently losing market share. In Q1 2014, Samsung and Apple made up 72% of the overall tablet market but, in the second quarter, their combined market share dropped to 66%. Samsung alone lost 8.8% of the market.
Stephanie Van Vactor, research analyst at ABI Research, said “The questionable need and longer lifecycle of tablets is creating a stall in advanced and mature markets. This stall is giving other vendors the opportunity to close the prominent gap and claim third place. The dent emerging vendors are creating in the market is impressive, but continuing that success is going to be the real challenge.”
[ABI Research Media Tablets, Ultrabooks and eReaders service]