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Apple's iPad Still Number 1 In China But Its Lead Is Shrinking

Chuck Jones
Senior Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
I cover technology companies, worldwide economies and the stock market
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IDC’s Dickie Chang, Senior Market Analyst for Client Devices in Asia/Pacific, released estimates for the number of tablets shipped to China customers in the June quarter. It shows that iPad shipments increased 28% year over year to 1.48 million units while its market share decreased from 49% to 28%. Apple ’s second quarter shipments could have been negatively impacted by a portion of the company’s 700,000 iPad channel inventory reduction. (Note that my family and I own Apple shares).

Samsung moved into second place with 329% growth to 571,000 units and taking 11% market share with Lenovo slipping to third with 413 ,000 tablets, 102% growth and 8% share. ASUS and Acer were fourth and fifth but only had 1% market share each.

Source: IDC

Besides lower prices non-Apple vendors enjoy a wider distribution network, have improved the quality of their tablets and with Android smartphones having a much higher market share than iPhones consumers are probably more inclined to stay in the Android/ Google ecosystem. Apple may need to lower the price of its iPad version 4 and iPad Mini version 1 when it launches updates, similar to what it has done with iPhones, to maintain its share or at least slow down its share losses.

What is also interesting is that there are over 50 other tablet vendors who have 1% or less market share. This market is due to have a major shakeout over the next 12 to 24 months and there will probably be some major price wars as this occurs.

The following table from IDC has worldwide tablet shipments that has Apple with 32.4% market share in the June quarter and decreased shipments of 14% year over year.

China’s iPad share of Apple’s sales increased from 6.8% in the June 2012 quarter to 10.1% in the June 2013 quarter. When you remove the positive effect of China’s iPad growth from the total shipments the iPad growth rate for the rest of the world was a negative 17.3%.

I have developed a Google Doc with numbers from IDC’s tablet press releases starting with the March 2011 quarter with the following link.

 

GRAPH

Source: IDC Worldwide Tablet Tracker, August 5, 2013

Follow me on Twitter @sandhillinsight. Find my other Forbes posts here.

 

Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones