The latest PC and tablet shipment figures in the US as revealed by Canalys present an interesting scenario, what with the segment registering a steep 28 percent decline in shipments in Q4, 2021 even though the segment as a whole grew by 1 percent in 2021. Overall, there has been a total of 33.8 million PCs sold in the US last year, which comprises of desktops, notebooks, workstations, and tablet devices.

Specifically, shipment of tablet devices came down by 31 percent to 12.7 million units mainly due to a lack in consumer demand. However, the Apple iPad continued to rule the roost with 5.114 million iPad units shipped during the period, which translates to a market share of 40.2 percent. For reference, Apple shipped 8.216 million iPad devices in Q4, 2020, which made for a 44.6 percent market share. All of this translates to a 37.7 percent negative growth rate for the Apple iPad.

However, the picture is pretty much the same for the next two tablet manufacturers namely Amazon and Samsung which too exhibited negative growth rates. That said, both managed to improve on their market share even though that is only marginally.

With 3.366 million tablet devices shipped during the period, Amazon came in second and controlled 26.4 percent of the market. However, while that represents a 30.6 percent decline in shipment figures, market share improved marginally given that it had 26.3 percent of the market with shipments of 4.853 million units in Q4 2020.

Samsung made up the third slot with 1.788 million tablet shipments which make for a 14 percent market share. However, that is still half a percentage point better than the 13.5 percent market share the company had in Q4 2020 from the 2.483 million tablets it shipped back then. Still, it makes for a flat 28 percent decline in shipment figures.

Microsoft, on the other hand, had a lot to gain with 0.639 million tablets shipped during the period. This makes for an 11 percent growth over the 0.575 million tablets it shipped during the same period a year ago. Market share improved from 3.1 percent to 5 percent thanks to the several new Surface devices it launched while demand for work-from-home devices continued to remain strong.

Meanwhile, TCL is the only other company among the top five that registered a positive growth rate, and the highest one at that too. The company managed to ship 0.554 million tablets during the period compared to 0.302 tablets it shipped a year ago while market share improved from a mere 1.6 percent to 4.4 percent. All of this represents an impressive 83.7 percent growth rate for the company.

On the whole, there have been 12.728 million tablets shipped in Q4 2020 which is 30.9 percent less than the 18.430 million tablets it shipped in the same period a year later.

The post Surface tablets registered positive growth in Q4 2020 even though the iPad remained dominant first appeared on Good e-Reader.