Apple's iPad is the king of a declining European, Middle Eastern tablet market

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in iPad
Apple's iPad regained the pole position in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) market during the March quarter, but people in that region are buying fewer tablets overall, according to new IDC research estimates.

Apple 2018 iPad


Apple's shipments climbed year-over-year from 1.982 million to 2.314 million, pushing its markeshare from 18.28% to 23.95%, the firm observed on Thursday. The leader in Q1 2018, Samsung, saw its share slide from 23.02% to 22.89%.

Apple was boosted by last year's iPad launches including a new "budget" model and redesigned iPad Pros, IDC argued. Other tablet makers didn't come close to either Apple or Samsung in Q1 2019 -- Huawei managed just a 10.81% share, while Lenovo and Amazon sat at 6.66% and 3.34% respectively.

The EMEA tablet space as a whole shrank 10.9% year-over-year to just 9.7 million units.

"Demand remains weak in the consumer segment as the lack of compelling reasons for consumers to refresh their tablets has slowed the pace of device renewals," IDC commented. The commercial segment "continues to consistently outperform the market average," but since it represents just a fifth of EMEA sales, its growth wasn't able to compensate for consumer decline.

The impact of Apple's new iPad Air and Mini models remains to be seen. Both products launched too late into the March quarter to make much of a difference.



Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quite simply the iPad puts all Android tablets to shame. Android has yet to be optimized for tablets and apps look like crap scaled up. The $50-$100 tablets you find on street corners and in the Dollar Store don’t even count.
    MisterKitStrangeDayschiajony0
  • Reply 2 of 12
    seankillseankill Posts: 566member
    lkrupp said:
    Quite simply the iPad puts all Android tablets to shame. Android has yet to be optimized for tablets and apps look like crap scaled up. The $50-$100 tablets you find on street corners and in the Dollar Store don’t even count.
    The iPad has a long way to go, that said, I 100% agree with your statement. I had an Android tablet for awhile, a high end 2014 Samsung note 10.1, and it was garbage other than the screen and pen. Slow and the apps were useless, most of the time just phone apps scaling up to tablet screen size, often still leaving black areas of the screen. Disliked the screen ratio too. It was crap unless you just watch movies. My 4 year year old iPad 2 was better. 

    If theres anywhere I’d rather have Apple or nothing, it’s the iPad and Apple Watch. Just not a fan of Apple’s desktops. 
    chia
  • Reply 3 of 12
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member
    iPads are like appliances, and they've been very powerful for many years now.

    Who goes out and buys a new toaster every year?

    Well, not that many people will go out and swap out their iPad every year either, when the current ones they are using are still great and powerful.


    MisterKitboredumbchiadedgeckoJWSCjony0
  • Reply 4 of 12
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    EMEA is a bit laughable...
  • Reply 5 of 12
    MisterKitMisterKit Posts: 492member
    If iPad sales decline, I don’t see how the reason could be anything other than that most everyone already owns one and is most nearly 100% satisfied.

    I have six now. A maxed out rev 1 through to a maxed out mini 5. They are great devices.

    if you don’t use an iPad what do you use and how do you claim that what you do use is better than an iPad? 
  • Reply 6 of 12
    MisterKitMisterKit Posts: 492member
    If iPad sales decline, I don’t see how the reason could be anything other than that most everyone already owns one and is most nearly 100% satisfied.

    I have six now. A maxed out rev 1 through to a maxed out mini 5. They are great devices.

    if you don’t use an iPad what do you use and how do you claim that what you do use is better than an iPad?
  • Reply 7 of 12
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    I still remembered years ago being at a client site and the owner asking me to help some techs connect their iPads to the corporate WiFi network.  These techs were complaining that the WiFi network was complete crap and would not allow the iPads to work.  Even I was intrigued by this and wanted to help.

    Turns out these "iPads", were Chinese knockoffs that the techs bought online from some sketchy Chinese vendor brand new for $30.  They were running some shitty Android OS and the UI was an exact knockoff of iOS but going anywhere deeper than one level on the settings panel showed immediately that it was not an Apple product.  The screen was similar in response to a palm pilot and required a hard, physical touch/drag to use.  

    The OS was so incredibly bad, the CPU (whatever it was) was so agonizingly slow that it was pure torture to use.  WiFi just would not work on this piece of junk.  

    After showing the techs my findings, I told them they were on their own.  The fact these techs believed these Chinese knockoffs were actual iPads was a testament to their stupidity and failure of our educational system.  Fortunately, I had my iPad at the time and I showed them mine next to theirs and asked them how would they ever thing theirs would pass off as the real thing.

    They attempted to contact the company.. in China of course, and the company said they would have to send the units back to them and were not responsible for shipping charges.  Shipping one would cost more than the actual unit.  

    I was able to get one tech to fess up and he admitted that the only reason he bought it was because he couldn't afford a real iPad.  I understand people not having money, but I told the tech that had I charged him for my time in troubleshooting his $30 piece of junk, he could have purchased a real iPad that worked on the first try.

    These Chinese iKnockoff vendors have zero shame.  It's crap like this that makes me happy that someone - anyone - is taking a stand against China for once.
    StrangeDaysJWSCjony0
  • Reply 8 of 12
    boredumbboredumb Posts: 1,418member
    apple ][ said:
    iPads are like appliances, and they've been very powerful for many years now.
    Who goes out and buys a new toaster every year?
    Well, not that many people will go out and swap out their iPad every year either, when the current ones they are using are still great and powerful.
    Quite so - completely different criteria should be applied to products with reliably long lifespans of effective evolution.
    And, while it may not apply to every one of their efforts, it should come as no surprise when the product raising that standard comes from Apple.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    IreneWIreneW Posts: 303member
    knowitall said:
    EMEA is a bit laughable...
    Care to elaborate?
    chia
  • Reply 10 of 12
    eriamjheriamjh Posts: 1,630member
    IDC cannot be trusted to report anything accurate regarding iPads, negative or positive.   
  • Reply 11 of 12
    CheeseFreezeCheeseFreeze Posts: 1,247member
    Apple can counter the decline with iOS13 and beyond. With true laptop-like usability and power people have reasons to buy a higher spec, new iPad.
    Things like multi-window/app support, mouse cursor support, multi-user support, easier sharing and file management, improved ways to perform batch actions, professional codec support, support for external drives, external iOS GPU support for pro tasks... are all reasons for productivity and power users to buy into the iPad ecosystem.
    JWSC
  • Reply 12 of 12
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    Apple can counter the decline with iOS13 and beyond. With true laptop-like usability and power people have reasons to buy a higher spec, new iPad.
    Things like multi-window/app support, mouse cursor support, multi-user support, easier sharing and file management, improved ways to perform batch actions, professional codec support, support for external drives, external iOS GPU support for pro tasks... are all reasons for productivity and power users to buy into the iPad ecosystem.
    I’d love to be able to take an iPad and wirelessly connect it to any large monitor I want and have the full desktop user experience, with UI changes as appropriate for mouse input.  The iPad itself could be used as a trackpad.
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