IDC’s recent study report on the tablet market comes as a shock to tablet makers with the revelation of drop in year-over-year growth rate from 51.8 percent in 2013 to 12.1 percent in the first quarter of 2014.
IDC predicts tablet shipments to see a dip to 245.4 million units this year from 260.9 million, as a result of bigger than expected downfall in demand.
Earlier this month, IDC announced that tablets and 2-in-1 devices have fell by 35.7 percent in the first quarter.
The firm has come up with two reasons for the fall in the tablet market. Firstly, consumers use tablets longer than the companies expect them to and when they want to change the device, they pass it on to another member of the family, leading to extended use of the device.
Tom Mainelli, Program VP of Devices and Displays at IDC said that the second reason is that “the rise of phablets — smartphones with 5.5-inch and larger screens — are causing many people to second-guess tablet purchases as the larger screens on these phones are often adequate for tasks once reserved for tablets.”
IDC also said that the demand for phablets has more than doubled in 2013. While the total phablet sales in the first quarter of 2013 was 4.3 percent of total smartphone sales, the figure saw a drastic increase to 10.5 percent accounting for 30.1 million devices.
IDC has also said that companies that manufacture tablets are now more attentive to bigger screen devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 which could redeem its glory of tablets.
Jitesh Ubrani, research analyst for IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker said, “The shift back toward larger screens will mark a welcome sea change for most vendors as the average selling price for these devices will remain roughly 50 percent higher than the average sub-8-inch device.”
