The tablet market has passed its flashy start

Jan 13, 2015 12:43 GMT  ·  By

For a few years after the emergence of tablets, and the subsequent increase in smartphone demand, it seemed as though the post-PC era was beginning. Analysts now beg to differ, if new sales reports are to be believed.

One particular market analyst firm has caught our eye: Gartner. Having been in the business of market surveys for many years, its findings in regard to the economic climate can usually be trusted.

Gartner has just published its findings for the PC market in regard to the end of year 2014, and they are at once off-putting and encouraging.

Off-putting because they show, yet again, that shipments were rather low compared to, say, five years ago, but encouraging because of signs that this won't last much longer.

Shipments of PCs in Q4 2014

In the fourth quarter, they were 25.6 million in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (the EMEA region), and 26.6 million in the Asia-Pacific region. That's a 2.8% and 2% increase, respectively, compared to the fourth quarter of 2013.

Meanwhile, the US showed shipments of 18.1 million, which was 13.1% greater than in the same period of 2013.

Keep in mind that laptop-tablet combo devices were taken into account here, so we can't exactly count tablets past the “bright beginning stage of the market” quite yet.

Still, many people preferred to buy a smartphone or normal tablet instead of a (new) PC, hence why shipments didn't go up by more.

Under normal marketing conditions, we wouldn't really expect a huge upswing in the sales of any product, PC or otherwise. But this is a special case because shipments have been falling more or less constantly since 2011, and a recovery is rather due.

In the end, PC shipments for the whole world grew by 1% in the final three months of 2014 compared to the fourth quarter of 2013.

The current ranking

Lenovo is leading worldwide sales with a share of 18.8%, followed by HP (17.5% share), Dell (12.8% share), Acer (7.9%), ASUS (7.2%) and everyone else (35.7% combined). HP managed to remain the primary provider in the US though, with 29.2%, followed by Dell with 22.6% shipment share, and Apple with 11.7%. Lenovo got fifth place, with 10.2% share.

All in all, it seems that PC shipments are improving, albeit slowly. They have been on a slow rise since the middle of 2014 and will continue to do better as the limitations of tablets finally catch up with people.

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