The Android tablet market, is getting more and more lively.
2021 can be seen as the year of the full explosion of the Android tablet market. In terms of brands, this year not only has the return of heavyweight products such as Xiaomi Tablet 5; there are also Huawei, Samsung, Lenovo has been in the Android tablet market for many years to adhere to the brand launched a number of different price points, different sizes of products; of course, there are also realme such emerging manufacturers in the tablet market for the first time to test the waters ...... plus Recently introduced OPPO Pad, Lenovo Saver Y700, and very early in the rumors, is expected to meet with you soon vivo, iQOO tablet. In the matter of doing the tablet, the mainstream cell phone brand "all-star lineup" has basically gathered.
There is a demand for the market
Why do we all have a brain to do the tablet? The reasoning is actually very simple: the market demand.
This is supported by the data. According to IDC's report, in 2021, China's tablet market shipments of about 28.46 million units, an increase of 21.8% year-on-year, the highest increase in shipments in the past seven years. And looking at the global tablet market data, for the full year 2021, total global tablet shipments grew 2.9% year-over-year to 168 million units, the highest level since 2016.
It is well known that the Android tablet market experienced a "half-life" until 2020. But the outbreak in 2020 gave the tablet market a shot in the arm. The need for home entertainment, office, education, and social networking created by the isolation of the epidemic at home made tablets, a large-screen portable device, the darling of the consumer market for a while. Especially in the first half of 2020, tablet products also appeared a wave of "price hikes", is also considered an anomaly in recent years in the field of electronic consumption.
Although the epidemic brought about by the consumer demand in 2021 momentum has slowed down, but the current view is still continuing. This is an important reason for the current year-over-year surge in shipments across the flat-panel consumer market.
Winners spawned by the epidemic
Demand growth is one aspect, the uneven development of the tablet market itself and changes in the competitive environment of the market can be seen as an inherent factor driving the full return and explosion of the current tablet market.
There is no doubt that the current tablet market iPad is still the absolute dominant player, both in terms of shipments and profitability without rival. Globally, Apple sold a total of 57.8 million iPads in 2021, with more shipments than the second and third places combined. That's an 8.4 percent year-over-year increase from 2020, increasing its market share to 34.2 percent.
By comparison, Samsung ranked second, selling 30.9 million units in 2021, up 3.8 percent year-over-year and with an 18.3 percent share. Lenovo ranked third, selling 17.77 million units in 2021, a 19.2 percent jump year-over-year, with a 10.5 percent market share.
In other words, Apple alone accounts for about a third of the current tablet market. Although Android tablets have a wide range of categories and dominate the market in terms of overall volume, even for top-tier international brands like Samsung, its tablet products are still difficult to compete with the iPad.
At the same time, the tablet market also faces some unexpected factors, such as the shrinking market share of some head brands. Still using IDC 2021 data as a reference, you can see that the global tablet market in the top five head brands, four are growing, only Huawei appeared a huge drop of 32.1%.
Huawei's share in the tablet market shrinks for reasons that don't need much explanation. The problem of lack of core due to force majeure factors is not smaller for Huawei's tablet products than its cell phone products. You know that before that, in 2018, 2019 and 2020, Huawei was able to ship about 15 million units of tablet products every year. And by 2021, sales of Huawei's tablet products dropped to 9.7 million units (the figure also includes some of the Honor brand's 2020 Q4 sales).
As with the cell phone market, Huawei's vacancy in the tablet market is also in dire need of other brands to fill. In terms of data, Lenovo is undoubtedly the biggest winner after Huawei's shrinkage. 2020, Lenovo tablet shipments reached 14 million units for the year, up 66.4% year-on-year. And in 2021, Lenovo tablet shipments rose to 17.7 million units, up 19.2 percent year-on-year. In terms of shipments, Lenovo has been the largest growing brand in the global tablet market for the past two years.
The rebound in demand and a new round of reshuffling of the market landscape is the current state of the global tablet market.
In the face of such a situation, cell phone manufacturers, especially from China's cell phone manufacturers naturally will not be willing to do "Others". So from last year, you can see the cell phone brands have started to force the tablet market.
To a large extent, the flat panel and the current smartphone in many hardware and software technologies and programs, in fact, there are many similarities. For example, large screen panels, batteries, speakers, cameras and other components, are able to rely on the existing smartphone supply system. In this regard, the smartphone brand in the past more than a decade to build upstream and downstream supply chain, to provide the most basic foundation for its layout in the tablet market.
On the other hand, the hardware and software program integration and technology development level, smartphone manufacturers have strong strength. Take the large screen software adaptation and interaction optimization that has plagued the Android tablet for many years. In recent years, the smartphone field of multi-tasking interaction, multi-screen interaction, cross-platform collaboration, IoT IOT and other technologies have been mature enough to devolve and transplant to the tablet product is also logical. The addition of these new technologies and solutions can bring more experience advantages to the Android tablet, and can also make up for some of the inherent flaws and shortcomings of the original tablet.
In addition, cell phone manufacturers over the years to accumulate the user base and the establishment of brand awareness, more conducive to its tablet products in its original audience coverage between groups. For example, before Huawei tablet users, most of them are also Huawei cell phone or Huawei notebook users.
In the experience level, only this same brand, the same platform to achieve more convenient and smooth cross-device collaboration and interconnection. As with the closed ecosystem established by iOS and iPadOS, Android phone makers are currently enhancing user brand stickiness and loyalty through this functional and experiential advantage.
The inclusion of the tablet into their own ecosystem, in addition to enhancing the user experience, is also a "bundle". This experience of "bundling" effect, will prompt the original respective cell phone users in the choice of tablet, will naturally go to choose the same brand of tablet products. In this way, the advantages of cell phone manufacturers will be more obvious.
Challenges under the good situation
However, it is not that the current cell phone manufacturers to do a good situation on the tablet, which faces the same challenges can not be ignored.
The first is that the current flat-panel market has tended to saturate, the epidemic generated consumer demand is slowing down. For most users, the tablet is not a necessity. In the core experience and application scenarios and smart phones, PC part of the overlapping conditions, the tablet can only focus on entertainment, education, online office and other market segments. And after two or three years of rapid growth, the epidemic to the flat-panel market will not always bring the incremental increase will not last.
In addition, the tablet product is now in the form and application also began to gradually differentiate. The most typical example is the iPad. initially the positioning of the tablet computer is actually a cell phone and PC between the "third screen", its main application scenario is biased towards audio and video entertainment experience.
But with the development of the market and product iterations, iPad has derived several categories: iPad mini, which focuses on small-screen portability, iPad digital series and Air series, which focus on audio and video entertainment and light office, and iPad Pro series, which is positioned at the high-end and focuses on productivity attributes.
Compared with iPad, Android tablet still has a big gap in positioning and experience. Especially in the high-end tablet market, there is no Android tablet that can compete with the iPad Pro. This requires cell phone brands to define their own tablet products, the need for a comprehensive product experience and user needs to make trade-offs.
As you can see, several mainstream Chinese cell phone manufacturers have listed, or are preparing to list the tablet products are relatively balanced in experience, as far as possible to achieve a balance of entertainment and productivity attributes.
But in this way, these relatively balanced tablet products will inevitably face strong competition from friends and giants corresponding to the segmentation of the tablet products, the loss of a certain experience advantage. Whether to do a "pop" in the tablet market to grab a bite of cake, or to do with Samsung, Huawei, as big and strong tablet product line, to challenge the iPad's dominance, this is a difficult choice.
In this seemingly lively market behind the next tablet market competition and challenges may not be easy.
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