Boy, Surface tablets sure are flying off the shelves

Surface Tablets

The world may be spinning around weird these days, but it still doesn’t explain this latest occurring. Microsoft is the only tablet maker to record growth in Q1 of this year.

It sure seems like that the Surface family of tablets is a hot commodity these days.

This has been revealed in the new research published by Strategy Analytics that confirms that Microsoft was the only major company to record growth in the tablet sector in the quarter that just ended. It managed a small increase of sales to the tune of 1% year-over-year.

Cause enough for celebrations, considering other companies registered some notable declines during this same period.

Strategy Analytics Tablet Market

Apple, for example, fell 6%, while Samsung saw a drop of 1%. The biggest loser, however, came out to be Lenovo that registered a massive decline of 20% compared to the same period last year. When taken in this context, Microsoft did really well here.

Strategy Analytics explains:

“Apple iPadOS shipments (sell-in) fell -6% year-on-year to 15.8 million units in Q1 2022, with worldwide market share climbing 1.7 percentage points to 39% as the vendor outpaced the market; compared to the holiday quarter when Apple was severely supply-constrained, shipments were actually 1% higher quarter-on-quarter.”

That said, iPad is still the king of the hill in these parts.

The fruity company still dominates the tablet market, and moved no less than 15.8 million iPads during the quarter. A substantial enough figure all things considered. Samsung, the runner-up in the charts for Q1 2022 managed to move 8.2 million tablets, securing a 20% slice of the pie.

There is also concerning news for Google here, as the demand for Android tablets is declining. The market share of devices powered by the mobile OS dropped to a new low of just 50% — unthinkable just a few years back.

Interestingly, even with this extraordinary dip, competition has heated up among Android vendors looking to grab market share. Brands like Xiaomi, Realme, Honor, OPPO, even Nokia have recently jumped into the game to create new dynamics.