Global tablet shipments are expected to reach 63.4 million units in the third quarter of 2014, growing a mere 1% from a year ago, showing that the market has entered the maturity phase earlier than expected, according to Digitimes Research's latest report about tablets.
Shipments of iPad and white-box tablets were also flat in the third quarter. Affected by a delay in shipments of iPad Air 2, total shipments of iPad devices totaled 15 million in the third quarter, up only 6.4% from a quarter earlier.
Third-quarter shipments of white-box tablets were less than those shipped a year earlier period, reaching only 26.2 million units despite subsidiaries from Intel.
However, non-Apple tablet suppliers as a whole managed to ramp up their shipments in the third quarter, with Samsung Electronics seated in the number two position firmly. But Samsung has been lowering its shipment target for 2015 due to a lack of models for the second half of the year and its conservative pricing strategy.
Asustek Computer has managed to ramp up shipments of its Fonepad and MeMO Pad family products, widening its gap against Lenovo. Meanwhile, Acer, Amazon and Dell took the titles from five to seven, respectively.
Taiwan-based tablet vendors shipped a total of 23.13 million tablets in the third quarter, accounting for 62.2% of global shipments in the quarter. Foxconn saw the ratio of its tablet shipments to total shipments by Taiwan-based makers fell to below 50% due to reduced shipments of large-size iPad and ODM models to Xiaomi Technology.
Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics saw their shipment ratios improve thanks to increased shipments to Asustek and Amazon.
This article is an excerpt from a Digitimes Research Quarterly Data Report (Global tablet market – 3Q 2014). Visit our latest Data reports.