[NewsPoster]

Following up on its release of smartphone data, IDC has published numbers on tablet shipments and marketshare for the fourth quarter of 2013. Apple's iPad saw shipments grow from 22.9 million to 26 million year-over-year, but lost marketshare, sliding from 38.2 percent to 33.8. This appears to have primarily benefited Samsung, which grew its share from 13 percent to 18.8, based on a unit increase from 7.8 million to 14.5 million.

Another beneficiary was Lenovo, which advanced its share from 1.3 percent to 4.4 on a unit surge from 0.8 million to 3.4 million. Asus' share held flat at 5.1 percent, despite shipments rising from 3.1 to 3.9 million. Amazon lost both shipments and share, which dipped from 5.9 million and 9.9 percent to 5.8 million and 7.6 percent, respectively.

The iPad has come under pressure from Android tablets, which are typically cheaper, and in recent years have improved substantially in terms of hardware features and software support. Apple has responded in the form of the iPad mini, and the company still has a significant edge in the quantity and quality of available apps. Shipment numbers do not automatically equate to end-user sales, and user-engagement studies typically show the iPad far ahead of rivals, averaging around 80 percent all tablet web browsing, for example.

[gprovida]

Has anyone gone back and looked at Gartner and IDC Mac sales, 10 Jan article in Appleinsider, "...While IDC and Gartner did agree on overall market trends, the two research firms had wildly different assumptions on Apple's domestic Mac sales for the quarter. While Gartner projected that Apple saw a massive 28.5 percent year over year spike in U.S. shipments, IDC instead forecast that Mac sales dropped 5.7 percent for the quarter in America...." To calibrate the error bars regarding number of shipped or sold devices from analysts?

Sales or shipments?

[Charles Martin]

hayesk: the article specifies shipments, and in fact for future reference, ANY article that talks about marketshare in phones and tablets is using shipments (otherwise known as "sell-in," or sales to retailers) as their figures -- no other company except Apple releases end-user sales data.

I wouldn't say shipments mean *nothing,* but as a data point its fairly worthless -- during the first Apple-Samsung trial, Samsung was forced to admit that it shipped about twice as many of the affected products as it actually ended up selling, because it had to provide hard end-user sales data to the court for damages purposes.

Particularly when it comes to tablets, the only numbers that mean anything are studies that analyse usage and engagement numbers. Ad impressions and response rates, developer revenue from purchases, web browsing, that sort of thing.

If you look at those numbers -- particularly in the US -- Apple is comfortably king in both phones and tablets. Globally speaking, the iPhone is in a tight race with Android, but the iPad is all alone out there.