Juniper: Apple and Samsung to face hard times in the tablet market

Teaser

After observing a decline of the global tablet market in 2014, a market analysis firm estimates that tablet sales will maintain their negative trend in 2015. Apparently, Apple and Samsung will be mostly affected by the decline.

Mihai Andrici, Published 03/16/2015

Tablet

As some may already know, multiple market research firms such as Gartner, IDC, and TrendForce previously estimated that the tablet market will continue its decline in 2015. Building up on these forecasts, a recent report from Juniper Research seems to confirm that the tablet market will maintain a negative trend in 2015. The firm argues that the explosion of phablet sales will continue to hurt the tablet market throughout the current year.

According to Juniper Research, Apple and Samsung, two of the world's largest tablet vendors by volume, will be most affected by falling tablet sales. The two tech giants are said to jointly account for just 39% of the tablet market by 2019. However, although the tablet market as a whole is showing sings of weakness, the firm argues that not all tablet manufacturers will experience a drop in sales. By 2019, China's Lenovo is estimated to increase its annual tablet sales by up to 30 million. Apparently, Lenovo's international success is fueled by its Yoga Tablet series, while the company's performance in the Chinese market is positively affected by Lenovo's diverse tablet offering.

As far as the battle of the operating systems is concerned, the report argues that Android will continue to be the dominant tablet OS. Microsoft's Windows is expected to gather a market share of 10% by 2019. The report also estimates that global phablet sales will reach 400 million EUR by the year 2019. As far as the current year is concerned, JuniperResearch estimates that 138 million phablets will be sold worldwide in 2015.