Tablet sales are plummeting as demand plummets after the pandemic, according to the latest figures from Canalys.
The analyst firm found that tablet sales fell 2.8% year-over-year, from 39,716 to 38,595 as a result of the boom in tablets for work has finally started to decline.
However, Amazon was able to buck the trend, with tablet sales up 3.3% and the company’s market share increasing from 8.7% to 9.2%.
Who controls the market?
Canalys owes Amazon’s relatively good performance to significant discounts on its Amazon Fire tablet range.
Apple managed to take the lead in the global tablet market with 14.88 million units shipped and a market share of 38.6%, with an overall decline of 2% from the first quarter of 2021.
Samsung took second place in the survey, shipping 7.86 million units with a 20.4% market share, with total shipments declining 1.7% from the same time in 2021.
Not all tablet providers have been hit equally hard by the market shift, according to the survey.
Huawei and Lenovo were particularly hard hit, with sales falling 21.7% and 20% respectively.
It wasn’t just the tablet market that felt the burn of the first pandemic hybrid work boom is coming to an end.
The broader laptop and PC market also underperformed according to Canalys, with an overall decline of 2.9% from 2021.
Nearly five million Chromebooks shipped worldwide in the first quarter of 2022, with all major vendors experiencing double-digit shipments, which the analyst attributed to a decline in education-related purchases.
HP was the worst performer in Chromebook shipments, with sales dropping 82% to just 775,000 units.
The tablet market also faces an uncertain future in terms of supply chain, according to Canalys, as the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the remaining Covid-19 lockdowns in China, will cause continued problems for tablet production.
