The statistic displays a forecast for global shipments of tablets from 2010 to 2020. In 2010, 19 million tablets were shipped worldwide. Sales are expected to continue to rise and, by 2017, shipments of tablets are expected to total 181 million units.
Tablet unit shipments - additional information
An estimated 286 million tablets will be shipped worldwide in 2018, more than a tenfold increase on the figure shipped in 2010. Currently, the greatest level of demand for tablet devices comes from Europe, although the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, is forecast to overtake Europe as the biggest regional market by 2018. That year, over 108 million of the devices are projected to be shipped in the Asia Pacific in comparison to 107.8 million in Europe. A further 78 million are expected to be distributed in North America as well as almost 10 million in Japan alone.
In the final quarter of 2015, a total of over 65.9 million tablets were shipped across the world. This marks only the third time that quarterly tablet shipments have exceeded 65 million units, the first being two years beforehand when shipments in the final quarter of 2013 reached 78.6 million tablets. As of the final quarter of 2015, Apple’s iPad held a 24.5 percent share of global tablet shipments. This marks a significant fall from the share of over 60 percent that it held in the second quarter of 2012. The company shipped a total of 16.1 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2015, and 49.5 million units across the whole year.
In comparison, Samsung shipped 9 million tablets in the final quarter of the year and Lenovo shipped a further 3.2 million units. Amazon, perhaps Apple's closest competitor by volume, shipped 5.2 million tablets. Samsung’s share in the tablet vendor market has remained relatively constant in recent quarters and, as of the final quarter of 2015, the South Korean company held a global share of 13.7 percent.
