Tablet sales are plummeting as demand sinks post-pandemic according to the latest figures from Canalys.
The analyst firm found that tablet sales were down 2.8% year-on-year, falling to 38,595 from 39,716 as the boom in tablets for work has finally started tapering off.
Amazon however was able to buck the trend, with its tablet sales rising 3.3%, and the company's market share rising from 8.7% to 9.2%
Who controls the market?
Canalys put Amazon’s relatively good performance down to hefty discounts on its Amazon Fire tablet range.
Apple managed to take the lead in the worldwide tablet market with 14.88 million units shipped and a market share of 38.6%, with its overall shipments down 2% from the first quarter 2021.
Samsung took second place according to the research, shipping 7.86 million units with a 20.4% market share, with its total shipments falling 1.7% from the same time in 2021.
Not all tablet providers were hit equally hard by the market shift according to the research.
Huawei and Lenovo were hit particularly badly, with their sales dropping 21.7% and 20% respectively.
It wasn’t just the tablet market that felt the burn from the initial pandemic hybrid working boom coming to an end.
The wider laptop and PC market also fared poorly according to Canalys, with total shipments dropping 2.9% from 2021.
Almost five million Chromebooks were shipped worldwide in Q1 2022, with all the major vendors experiencing double digit falls in their shipments, which the analyst attributed to a decline in the number of education related purchases.
HP was the worst performer in terms of Chromebook shipments, with its sales dropping 82% to just 775,000 units.
The tablet market also faces an uncertain future in terms of its supply chain, according to Canalys, with the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as remaining Covid-19 lockdowns in China, will cause persistent issues for the tablet production.
