Worldwide Tablet Shipments Post Flat Growth in 2Q22 While Chromebooks Experience a Sharp Decline

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Worldwide tablet shipments reached 40.5 million units during the second quarter of 2022 (2Q22), posting year-over-year growth of 0.15%, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Smoother deployments into education projects and several promotional sales, such as the "618" online promotion days in China and Amazon's Prime Day in the U.S., led to better-than-expected shipments in the quarter.

New vendors like Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and realme also performed beyond expectations, which contributed to growth in the Android tablet market in the quarter. Meanwhile, Chromebooks continued to decline with shipments down 51.4% year over year to 6 million units in 2Q22. The decline was expected as the inventory buildup is still being cleared out and demand in the education sector has slowed. However, shipment volumes are still above pre-pandemic levels.

"The tablet market performed better than expected despite the inflationary pressures, geopolitical issues, and continued restrictions in China due to Covid," said Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "There are several factors that are working in favor of tablets: one being the continued demand for tablets as cheaper alternatives to PCs. Also, many top players have been doing a tremendous job with their distribution strategies and have been able to fully supply tablets for several education projects. Also noteworthy is the proliferation of low-cost detachables, especially from new entrants in regions like Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), that are tapping into the demand for devices for education purposes and disrupting the vendor dynamics."

"While Chromebook shipments have trended down in the past few quarters, there's still opportunity to be had as the pandemic has brought about positive changes to Chrome adoption," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "The need for remote learning accelerated schools' plans to reach a 1:1 ratio for PCs to students and this ratio will likely continue to hold in the future and even if PC shipments decline in other categories, Chrome will continue at these elevated levels."