The second quarter of 2023 was very bad for tablets and somewhat bad for Chromebooks, according to preliminary data from International Data Corp. (IDC). The firm’s Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker found that worldwide tablet shipments were down 29.9% compared to the year-ago quarter, with total shipments of 28.3 million units.
IDC said that most of the top vendors experienced double digit declines. Their troubles were exacerbated by “elevated levels of channel inventory.”
The smaller Chromebook sector had a year-over-year decline of 1.8% based on total shipments of 5.8 million units. IDC said that there were “pull-in orders” from the first half of 2023 due to anticipated licensing cost increases in the second half.
The top five tablet vendors were Apple (10.5 million units shipped, -16.8 year-over-year growth); Samsung (5.8 million, -18.3%), Lenovo (2.1 million, -38.8%); Huawei (1.7 million, -22.9%) and Xiaomi (1.0 million, 41.6%).
The top five Chromebook vendors were HP (0.9 million units shipped, 69.2% growth); Lenovo (1.3 million, 3.1%); Dell Technologies (1.5 million; -14.9%); Acer Group (1.3 million, -20.7%) and ASUS (0.6 million, -37.7%).
“The economic market conditions in the past years made way for several tablet deployments. Products that have more features but are also economically priced are well accepted, especially in the emerging markets as they bring in high value to consumers,” Anuroopa Nataraj, the senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a press release about the tablet shipments. “This is where several new players have pitched in and as a result, the emerging markets have had a relatively better growth rate than the mature markets.”
In February, IDC said that in the fourth quarter of 2022 worldwide tablet shipments rose 0.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. The firm said that 45.7 million units shipped. In the same report, IDC said that Chromebook shipments contracted in the fourth quarter (-24.3%) and for the year (-48%).
