Tablets were on a decline before the pandemic
We know about the boost in numbers that the tablet market experienced over the past couple of years. With people being locked down in their homes, they needed electronics to keep them occupied. This led to a rise in sales of devices like tablets and game consoles. It became difficult for people to buy consoles like the Nintendo Switch. Before that point, the tablet market was in freefall. Over the course of the 2010s, smartphones became bigger and more capable of getting business done. Consequently, people just didn’t need tablets quite as much. Phones were becoming the replacement for tablets. With a diminishing tablet market, companies like Sony stopped making tablets of their own. This led companies like Samsung and Apple to be really the only companies that paid attention to their tablets.
The tablet market saw an 11% decline
Over the past several months, we’ve actually seen some rising excitement over tablets: the new Galaxy Tab S8, Android 12L, and Google’s Pixel Tablet announcement. However, all good things must come to an end. Canalys reports that tablets are facing another downturn in shipments. In Q2 of 2022, the tablet market experienced an 11% drop year-over-year. This knocks the number of shipments down to 34 million last quarter. This is the fourth year-over-year decline that the tablet market has experienced. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise because, according to the chart, 2020 was the strongest year for tablets in recent years. That’s when the pandemic was at its highest. In Q4 2020, there were north of 50 million tablets shipped.
