Setting the bar high
Having recently published its figures for the global tablet market, IDC today offered up a look at EMEA. In Q2 of this year a total of 4.4 million tablets shipped in EMEA - well ahead of the forecast 3.7 million figure - giving EMEA around a quarter of the global market. Most of the tablets shipped in the region were in Western Europe.
But while the worldwide tablet market grew by 4x year-on-year in Q2, EMEA grew by 5x. While this could be a consequence of Europe getting the iPad a bit later than the US, the indication is that tablets are growing faster over here than in the rest of the world. Sequential growth was 82 percent, which was a bit lower than the global figure.
Apple, of course, remains the dominant force in tablets. As you can see it accounted for two thirds of all tablets shipped, as the flurry of Android Honeycomb tablets failed to sell in quite the numbers the OEMs would have hoped. To limit Apple - which pretty much had the entire market a year ago, to 67 percent is still a decent effort, but the first half of this year has demonstrated how high Apple set the bar - both in terms of functionality and price.
"IDC expects the EMEA media tablet market to continue to enjoy robust expansion, with shipments forecast to reach close to 22 million units, representing €9.1 billion in value in 2011," said Eszter Morvay, research manager for IDC's personal computing group. The fact that Morvay, rather than one of her mobile-facing colleagues, has produced this report offers an indication of how IDC classifies tablets.
"The second half of the year will see a further expansion of product availability, which will lead to accelerating competition and more aggressive price points. The Christmas season in particular is expected to be very buoyant with vendors positioning their products as the perfect Christmas gift."
The tablet market will still only be around four percent of the PC one by volume this year, but IDC expects EMEA shipments to grow by a further 50 percent to 33 million next year. Global PC shipments are only expected to grow by ten percent next year, and hardly grow at all this year, so it does look like tablets are set to claim an increasing proportion of the personal computing market.
Top 6 Vendors: Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Media Tablet Shipments,
2Q11 (000 Units)
|
Vendor |
2Q10 |
2Q11 |
Share 2Q10 |
Share 2Q11 |
2Q11/2Q10 Growth |
|
Apple |
834 |
2.910 |
94.3% |
66.6% |
249% |
|
Samsung |
0 |
308 |
0.0% |
7.0% |
NA |
|
Acer |
0 |
268 |
0.0% |
6.1% |
NA |
|
ASUS |
0 |
145 |
0.0% |
3.3% |
NA |
|
Archos |
25 |
103 |
2.9% |
2.4% |
307% |
|
RIM |
0 |
93 |
0.0% |
2.1% |
NA |
|
Others |
25 |
540 |
2.8% |
12.4% |
2,061% |
|
Total |
884 |
4.368 |
100.0% |
100.0% |
394% |
Source: IDC EMEA Media Tablet and eReader Tracker, 2Q11, September 2011
