The most worrying aspect of Apple’s thriving business at the moment is the iPad, which has suffered sales declines for the last six quarters. However, the device is merely following an overall market trend that has saw sales of tablets decline on the whole for the same amount of time. Yes, Cupertino’s slate is declining rapidly, but then it has further to fall and is still comfortably the best-selling tablet on the market.
Respected market research, the IDC, has revealed that 44.7 million tablets were sold throughout the industry during the second quarter, which run April through June. That is a sharp 7% decline from the 48 million units that we shipped during the same period last year.
The iPad was responsible for nearly 25% of those sales, amassing 10.9 million in unit sales throughout the period, which was still a 17.9% fall year-on-year. Apple CEO Tim Cook has often said the iPad will rebound when the enterprise initiative with IBM really takes hold, but it is hard to see how the iPad can find success in an overall market that is declining. The truth is consumers do not want to upgrade tablets with the same regularity that they do smartphones, perhaps if Cook and co. can get them to do so, the iPad may flourish once again.
