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Tablet Shipments Decline For Eighth Straight Quarter, No Company Surpassed 10 Million Units (venturebeat.com)
Similar to the smartwatch market, the tablet market is in rough shape. According to estimates provided by IDC, the tablet market has been in decline for eight quarters in a row, and no company managed to ship more than 10 million units. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2016 saw a 14.7 percent year-over-year decline: 43 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 50.5 million units in the same quarter last year. Both Apple and Samsung saw their shipment numbers fall once again, though Apple gained share, up 1.9 points to 21.5 percent market share. Samsung slipped 0.9 points to 15.1 percent, but still shipped more than double the units than those behind it. This is the third time that Amazon has placed in the top five in a non-Q4 quarter -- typically, the company only shows up due to the holiday season. The company's low-cost Fire tablet has propelled the company to the top, though the growth shown is skewed by the fact that IDC did not include the 6-inch tablets offered by Amazon in Q3 2015. Lenovo shipped fewer units but grew 0.3 percent to 6.3 percent share, while Huawei shipped more units and gained 1.9 points to 5.6 percent. Both companies have maintained their positions for many quarters now and don't look like they will be displaced.
Is this surprising?
People who want tablets already have them by now. People who don't want them aren't going to buy one.
You're left with a very small market segment. People who have a tablet old enough to warrant replacing, people who always wanted one but previously couldn't afford one, but then got a nice promotion at work or something ... and that's it?
Unlike the smart watch market however, people do want tablets. It's a good form factor for media consumption. Sales should stabilize at some point. We're still just getting over the initial "gold rush" period to find the actually year-to-year purchase rate .
This signature is false.
Does this mean we can have normal web UI back again? Remember, when buttons and menus didn't take up a good 30% of the overall page space? Like beta? Fsck beta for even having been an example of this.
You can beat it for reading- Kindle paperwhites are far easier on the eyes, less likely to cause long term eye strain issues, and will never run out of juice in the middle of a trip. I'd never use a tablet over an e-ink device for reading.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?