IDC today released its Middle East and Africa Quarterly Tablet Tracker for 2016 report and claimed the total sales of 13.8 million units, a decline of 14.7% Y-o-Y tablet sales in the Middle East Africa region, which is in line with global tablet market’s 15.6% decline over the same period.
“Tasks that were previously performed on tablets are increasingly moving to bigger-screen smartphones, so tablets are becoming redundant in the consumer ecosystem of gadgets,” says Nakul Dogra, senior research analyst for client devices at IDC MEA. “Indeed, consumers are now investing more time and money into smartphones than tablets, which has led to a slowdown of tablet markets around the world, not just here in MEA. That said, there are still countries in Africa that harbor scope for further tablet penetration.”
In terms of vendor rankings, Samsung continued to lead the MEA tablet market in Q4 2016 with unit share of 17.6%, followed by Lenovo, Apple, i-Life and Huawei.
Taking the above factors into account, IDC’s tablet market forecast has been revised downwards. IDC now expects the market to decline -8.1% Y-on-Y in 2017 to total 12.76 million units. The longer-term forecast has also been revised downwards, with IDC now expecting the market to decline at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -0.2% over the 2016–2021 period to total 13.64 million units in 2021.
