We’ve known it anecdotally for some time, but a new report released today by Australian analysis firm Telsyte confirms that Android tablet sales are declining.
Overall, Tablet sales in Australia did grow, though it was only a growth of 1%, with a total of 1.65 million tablets sold in Australia during the second half of 2017.
The report shows that 46% of tablet devices sold during the period ran iOS with sales of iPads up by 6% year over year. Telsyte attributes this to the drive for replacement units and the new budget friendly 9.7-inch iPad. Telsyte also
points towards Apple pushing the iPad Pro as a PC replacement.
PC based tablets such as the 2-in-1 tablets running Windows saw growth accounting for 29% of the total market, with Windows 2-in-1 tablet sales increasing by 13% in H2 2017 over the same half in 2016.
The big loser in all this is of course Android tablets, which saw sales fall by 16% in the second half of 2017 to just 24% of the market compared to the same time period in 2016. Telsyte found that Samsung and Lenovo tablets are the largest Android tablet vendors in Australia, with other manufacturers preferring to offer Windows devices.
Telsyte believes that the next big thing in tablets will be eSIM which could rejuvanate tablet sales. Telsyte analyst Alvin Lee said
The early success of eSIM in wearables such as the Apple Watch 3 LTE can potentially extend to tablets, with simplified and more user-friendly setup for mobile connectivity.
Currently there are signs that the growth of tablets sales is peaking, with Telsyte seeing growth of tablet sales only growing by 200,000 people in 2017 over 2016, with more than 15 million Australians having access to a tablet at the end of 2017.
Telsyte does see potential growth in education and enterprise for tablet sales over the next 1-2 years.
As far as Android tablets sales goes we’ve acknowledged previously that they’re not the best option for productivity or even general use. The launch yesterday of the first Chrome OS tablets could be a start of something big for Google. The mixture of a full Chrome browser mixed with the benefit of Android apps could be a winning bet for Google. The only drawback being we have seen nothing about a local launch of the Acer tablet here.
We’ll see what happens over the next year.
