The global tablet market continued to deteriorate during the fourth quarter and all of 2023.
Ever since the pandemic ended, the global tablet market has been suffering from a lack of demand. Of course, it didn’t help matters that Apple, for the first time since it launched the first-gen iPad in 2010, went a whole year without introducing a new iPad model. During the pandemic, demand for tablets rose as employees turned to these devices to help them do their job during the day and students used their tablets to attend virtual classes. During the evening, the tablets were used by both to view streaming entertainment and play games.
According to data published by Canalys, global tablet shipments declined over 10% during the fourth quarter of 2023 (a decline of 10.7%) and during all of 2023 (a decline of 10.3%). During the quarter running from October through December 2023, 37.8 million tablets were shipped. Compare that to the 42.3 million tablets that were delivered during Q4 of 2022.Apple’s fourth-quarter global tablet market share declined by 6.9 percentage points to 39.2%
For the final quarter of 2023, Apple led the way with shipments of 14.8 million iPad units, down 24% from the 19.5 million the company shipped during the same quarter in 2022. That performance led to a sharp decline in Apple’s global market share from 46.1% in Q4 2022 to 39.2% during the fourth quarter of last year.
The iPad had a tough fourth quarter last year
Samsung was a distant second having shipped 6.
