IDC: quarterly tablet shipments down 7.9% YoY, the 13th straight quarter of decline; Amazon sells ~7.7M tablets in Q4, overtaking Samsung for second place
The tablet market has now declined year-over-year for 13 quarters straight. Q4 2017 saw a 7.9 percent year-over-year decline …
Context & Ripple Effects
The tablet market has been shrinking almost without interruption since IDC recorded the first-ever quarterly decline in Q4 2014: full-year 2015 fell 10.1%, and by early 2017 the streak had reached its tenth consecutive down quarter. Q4 2017 extends that to thirteen quarters, down another 7.9% year-over-year.
The notable change this quarter is positional, not just directional: Amazon moved past Samsung into second place on roughly 7.7M units, meaning the two legacy leaders that have been losing share since 2014-2015 are no longer one and two. IDC's later data showing the market back in growth by 2021, with Amazon holding a durable ~9.5% share, makes clear the discount vendor used these decline years to entrench itself.
First-order effects
- Samsung drops from second to third in worldwide tablet shipments behind Amazon's ~7.7M Q4 units, while Apple holds first — the first time in this three-year decline streak that the runner-up slot changes hands.
- Amazon enters 2018 with a much larger installed base of low-priced tablets, converting a shrinking hardware category into distribution for its own services.
Second-order effects
- Samsung and other Android vendors face a squeeze between Apple at the premium end and Amazon at the discount end, pressuring them toward price cuts or exit from low-margin segments.
- Amazon's volume position gives it leverage to keep tablet prices near cost, since device economics are subsidized by content and retail attach rather than hardware margin.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the tablet market structurally bifurcates: a premium tier anchored by Apple and a commodity tier won on price and ecosystem lock-in — which is roughly the shape IDC's 2021 data shows, with the market growing again and Amazon still holding ~9.5% share.
- A 13-quarter decline resets vendor expectations for the category: tablets get managed as an accessory to phone-and-services ecosystems rather than pursued as a standalone growth business.
The trend: The tablet market is consolidating around a two-tier structure in which ecosystem-owning vendors — Apple at the top, Amazon at the bottom — absorb share from mid-market hardware makers during a multi-year demand contraction.