Tablet Shipments Continue To Erode Under Pressure From Resurgent Notebooks; Large-Size Smartphones

Digitimes’ Max Wang and Joseph Tsai say tablet shipments are continuing diminish under renewed competition from low-priced notebooks and large-size smartphone “phablet” devices, and are expected to continue declining into 2015, according to market watchers.

Wang and Tsai say a new wave of US$199 notebooks are expected to launch in the fourth quarter, and that many tablet vendors are apprehensive that demand their devices tablets may diverted to these cheap notebooks.

They note that 7-inch display tablets has at one point accounted for some 70 percent of overall tablet sales, but have fallen off to below 60 percent of late recently because of large-size smartphones whose competitive impact has affected overall tablet sales.

Wang and Tsai say that confronted with the challenge of price competition from Chromebooks, notebook vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba are all planning to release US$199-$249 Windows-based products, and many have already cut prices of existing products. Acer and Samsung’s Chromebooks in the US are selling for US$199, while Asustek’s 11.6-inch Windows-based touchscreen notebook is priced around US$249. Toshiba’s 15.6-inch entry-level notebook is also priced around US$280, and the reporters cite NPD DisplaySearch projecting global tablet shipments to reach 254 million units, up two percent on year, but vastly lower than its previous forecasts of 14 percent, while WitsView expects global tablet shipments to be flat for 2014, and to suffer an on-year shipment drop in 2015.

It appears that Steve Jobs’s post-PC era declaration was premature.

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