Tablet Shipments Flat in 2Q22 While Chromebooks Decline

Worldwide tablet shipments reached 40.5 million units during the second quarter of 2022 (2Q22), posting year-over-year growth of 0.15%, according to preliminary data from IDC. Smoother deployments into education projects and several promotional sales, such as the "618" online promotion days in China and Amazon's Prime Day in the U.S., led to better-than-expected shipments in the quarter.

Apple led the tablet market with 12.6 million shipments and a 31% market share, despite the small decline of 2.89%. Samsung captured 18.1% of the market with 7.3 million tablets shipped, a 10.63% decline YoY. Amazon had 5.5 million shipments, fourth-placed Lenovo sold 3.5 million, while Huawei captured fifth place with 2.1 million shipments. New vendors like Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and realme performed beyond expectations, which contributed to growth in the Android tablet market in the quarter.

"The tablet market performed better than expected despite the inflationary pressures, geopolitical issues, and continued restrictions in China due to Covid," said Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "There are several factors that are working in favor of tablets: one being the continued demand for tablets as cheaper alternatives to PCs. Also, many top players have been doing a tremendous job with their distribution strategies and have been able to fully supply tablets for several education projects. Also noteworthy is the proliferation of low-cost detachables, especially from new entrants in regions like Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), that are tapping into the demand for devices for education purposes and disrupting the vendor dynamics.

Meanwhile, Chromebooks continued to decline with shipments down 51.4% year over year to 6 million units in 2Q22. The decline was expected as the inventory buildup is still being cleared out and demand in the education sector has slowed. However, shipment volumes are still above pre-pandemic levels. Dell shipped 1.5 million devices, a 15.5% decline compared with the same period last year. Acer had an even bigger drop (28.9%) but has jumped to second place with 1.3 million Chromebooks sold. Lenovo dropped to third place with a 54% decline YoY. HP lost, even more, 78.6%, which led them to stumble from the leading position in 2Q21 to fourth place in 2Q22.

"While Chromebook shipments have trended down in the past few quarters, there's still opportunity to be had as the pandemic has brought about positive changes to Chrome adoption," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "The need for remote learning accelerated schools' plans to reach a 1:1 ratio for PCs to students and this ratio will likely continue to hold in the future and even if PC shipments decline in other categories, Chrome will continue at these elevated levels.