With brand vendors aggressively investing in the second half of 2013, 8-inch tablets accounted for 15.2% of global tablet shipments in December, while Android-based tablets acquired a combined 53.2% shipment share in the month. Almost 50% of global tablets featured 2GB memory in December, helping the specification to become the mainstream for tablets.
8-inch tablets saw their shipment share rise significantly from 5.9% in September 2013 to over 15% in December because of the entry of Windows-based 8-inch tablets. Intel's release of its Bay Trail-based processors have relieved Windows-based tablets from power-efficiency concerns, prompting first-tier PC brand vendors such as Lenovo, Acer and Dell to release related devices, Digitimes Research's figures showed.
The increase in 8-inch models' shipment share was partly contributed by brand vendors diversifying their tablet businesses. Because the 7-inch segment has already been occupied by white-box and brand vendors' entry-level products, and only leading players such as Samsung Electronics, Google and Amazon are able to achieve product visibility, many vendors are now trying to expand into the 8-inch segment, hoping to achieve better gross margins.
Samsung was one of the aggressive vendors during the year-end holiday sales and has recently cut its Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 price to US$149, and offered competitive prices for its Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 and 10.1.