Apple iPad sales beat market trend, record fastest growth in December quarter

Apple recorded the fastest growth in the Indian tablet market in the quarter ended December 2016 and made it into the top five, even as the segment shrank 3.1% to 3.7 million units for the year. The declining trend, which has been consistent over the past few years, is expected to continue, analysts at two research firms said.
Apple’s shipments in the December quarter grew 16% from the preceding one and 17% from the year earlier, said analysts at International Data Corporation (IDC) India, adding that the Cupertino-based company had moved up the rankings after a long time.
“While iPad Air 2 remained the top selling model for Apple, constituting half its total shipments, the iPad Pro accounted for 22.7% of India’s total detachable category in 2016,” IDC said Thursday. Detachables, which come with keyboards that can removed, are a subset of the tablet market.
For the quarter and year ended December, the top four tablet makers by volume were Datawind, Samsung, Lenovo and iBall, in that order. Micromax was fifth for the full year and Apple took the slot in the fourth quarter.
Cybermedia Research (CMR) reported a sharper 18% on-year fall in tablet shipments in 2016, to 3.5 million units, with Datawind leading the market, followed by Samsung, Pantel and Micromax.
IDC analysts said consumer demand for tablets will decline in the coming years thanks to smartphones with large screens, reflecting a global trend as buyers hold on to their old devices instead of buying new ones.
Commercial shipments may partially offset this with adoption having increased recently. The segment grew 35% in the full year.
“We expect this to grow further in coming quarters,” said IDC India senior analyst Karthik J. “Detachables are expected to continue with healthy double-digit growth in 2016.”
CMR expects data bundling and a strategic focus on industries such as healthcare or cab aggregators to provide some growth. But consolidation is set to hit this segment as well, the firm said, predicting that only six to seven players may remain, having dropped to 22 from 66 in 2015.
Fourth-quarter tablet shipments fell 19.6% from the preceding one and 4.3% from the year earlier to 820,000 units.
“This is primarily due to seasonal decline after festive spike in Q3 and demonetization limiting the consumer sales in the last quarter of the year,” IDC said.
IDC said the detachables category grew 30.7% in 2016, driven by demand from both the consumer and commercial segments. Acer accounted for almost a fourth of them, followed by Apple’s iPad Pro. 4G tablets accounted for almost 25% of total tablet shipments in 2016, up from 6% in the previous year, both research agencies said.