If it wasn’t obvious already, the latest numbers from research company International Data Corporation make it clear: Smartphones are still more popular than tablets worldwide.
Meanwhile, the future of those who manufacture these devices remains up for debate.
In the third quarter, tablet shipments declined 14.7 percent compared to a year earlier, hitting just 43 million units. Worldwide smartphone shipments, in contrast, ticked up 1 percent to 362.9 million units.
Apple (ticker: AAPL) is still the top dog in the tablet market with 21.5 percent of industry market share, up from 19.6 percent last year. Samsung follows at 15.1 percent, with Amazon.com ( AMZN) trailing at 7.3 percent. The future of tablets, however, remains in flux.
“The race to the bottom is something we have already experienced with slates [a tablet without a keyboard, accessed via a stylus pen or touch screen, reports Fortune] and it may prove detrimental to the market in the long run as detachables could easily be seen as disposable devices rather than potential PC replacements,” according to Jitesh Ubrani, an International Data Corporation senior research analyst.
As for smartphones, Samsung still holds a stronger share of the market compared to Apple across the world, controlling 20 percent of market share compared to Apple’s 12.5 percent. Both are down from last year’s third quarter, where Samsung held 23.3 percent market share and Apple at 13.4 percent. The iPhone is Apple’s most valuable product, garnering 60 percent of its revenue in the company’s fiscal third quarter.
Despite Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 recall disrupting the market, it’s still holding on. “Samsung’s market dominance in the third quarter was unchallenged in the short term even with this high-profile Galaxy Note 7 recall, but the longer term impact on the Samsung brand remains to be seen,” Melissa Chau, associate research director of mobile devices at the International Data Corporation, said in a statement. “If the first recall was a stumble for Samsung, the second recall of replacement devices face-planted the Note series.”
The International Data Corporation noted that the iPhone could benefit from the Note 7 recall from last month. But competition from Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) with Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones could prove another market hurdle.
In Apple‘s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, iPhone sales ticked down 13 percent, making just $28.2 billion compared to $32.2 billion a year earlier. FactSet anticipated iPhone revenue dropping 13.8 percent. Still, the 45.5 million unit sales beat analyst estimates by 500,000 units.
While the iPhone 7’s better-than-anticipated early sales numbers gave the company’s stock a jolt, the company’s full fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report didn’t impress investors, sending AAPL stock down 2 percent.
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Smartphones Are More Popular Than Tablets, But Where Are Markets Going? originally appeared on usnews.com
