A fifth of all tablets sold in the last quarter in Western Europe were detachable ones according to research company IDC as businesses snap them up, providing a great marketing opportunity for Microsoft to push its latest operating system, Windows 10.
"As the detachable tablets available on the market become more powerful and better suited to business requirements, this form factor has been successfully adopted by professionals and executives as it perfectly addresses their mobility needs and is increasingly seen as a notebook replacement," said Daniel Goncalves, research analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing.
That was further confirmed as IDC found out that adding the detachable tablet numbers to the declining laptop ones results in a fairly flat market.
Overall, the B2B tablet market in Europe grew to 17% for the full of 2015, a four point gain compared to 2014. A swift move to B2B meant that average selling prices rose by a whopping 30% for Windows tablets (compared to 26% when Android and iOS).
Western Europe appears to be ahead of the curve as B2B tablets accounted for only 12% of the 66.2 million units shipped in Q4 2015.
Globally, both Android and iOS saw their respective marketshares shrink significantly to 67% and 24% respectively while Windows enjoyed a 28% year-on-year growth to 9%.
Apple, however, did manage to grow its average selling price by nearly 13% as enough people bought the iPad Pro to negate the impact of the drop in units sold. Android on the other hand saw a 13% drop while Windows tablets had an 8% lower ASP.
