Though individuals are nonetheless shopping for hundreds of thousands of iPads, the numbers are down in comparison with the place they had been through the pandemic.

Nonetheless, Apple is doing a a lot better job of promoting tablets than any of its rivals. Through the second quarter of this yr, it shipped about twice as many as another firm, in keeping with a pair of market analysis companies.

iPad shipments aren’t fairly what they was

The pandemic introduced an enormous surge in demand for tablets of all sorts. As one instance, the third quarter of 2020 — close to the height of the Keep At Residence motion —  noticed a 47% year-over-year enhance in iPad shipments, in keeping with Canalys.

However we’re now within the post-pandemic interval, and individuals are again within the workplace and classroom. The necessity for tablets to take courses or work at home has declined.

That’s mirrored in iPad shipments. Within the April-through-June quarter, market analysis agency IDC says the iPad cargo complete was 10.5 million, a 16.8% annual lower.

However not everybody agrees the state of affairs is so unhealthy. iPad shipments totaled 12.4, in keeping with the newest knowledge from Canalys. That’s really a modest 2% year-over-year enhance.

“Though demand for tablets has dropped from the highs of the pandemic, it stays comparatively resilient,” stated Himani Mukka, Analysis Supervisor at Canalys. “With the PC and smartphone markets additionally underneath menace, distributors promoting tablets have a further instrument to assist goal pockets of alternative in client, industrial and training sectors.”

Shipments vs. income

Apple doesn’t reveal what number of iPads it ships. It’s as much as firms like Canalys and IDC to estimate the determine. And it’s not straightforward as a result of there’s a variety of fashions and value ranges in Apple’s pill line.

Apple does say how a lot income got here in from iPad gross sales, and in Q2 it was down 20% year-over-year. However that doesn’t imply the variety of tablets shipped went down 20%. The combo of fashions which can be promoting now versus a yr in the past has an enormous impact.

iPad Air 5 launched in spring of 2022, bringing a surge of gross sales for the $599 mannequin in Q2.
Apple defined when it introduced the newest quarterly income quantity that Q2 2023 declined as a result of there was no new iPadOS pill early this yr to push up gross sales

And that additionally means the next proportion of shoppers are selecting the fundamental $329 iPad, lowering income however not shipments.

iPad nonetheless vastly outsells Android tablets

Though iPad might not have had a powerful quarter, it did much better than Android tablets. However that’s not shocking, provided that Apple has dominated this product class for a few years. Each IDC and Canalys agree it controls roughly 40% of the worldwide market.

Samsung is perennially in second place. In Q2 2023, it shipped 5.8 million tablets, an 18% year-over-year decline, in keeping with IDC.

Lenovo shipped 2.2 million items, 38.8%, whereas Huawei shipped 1.7 million tablets within the June quarter, a 22.9% decline.