The latest numbers from market research firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker show that Apple remains the largest vendor in a declining tablet market, shipping 10.9 million iPads in the second quarter of 2015. While the iPad continues to be the best-selling tablet, its worldwide market share fell below 25% as Apple faced increased competition from low-cost rivals Lenovo, Huawei and LG.
Samsung continued to be the second largest tablet vendor with 7.6 million tablets shipped in the second quarter and 17% market share, a 12% year-over-year unit decline. Lenovo, Huawei and LG Electronics rounded off the top five, with 2.5 million, 1.6 million and 1.6 million global tablet shipments in the second quarter respectively. All other tablet vendors had a combined 45.6% market share.
iPad sales have declined for six consecutive quarters year-over-year in what has become a stagnated tablet market over the past few years, but that trend could be broken in a few months as Apple is expected to release up to three new iPads in time for the holiday shopping season: iPad Air 3, iPad mini 4 and the much-rumored 12.9-inch "iPad Pro" targeted at professional and enterprise users.
Monday October 26, 2026 6:05 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple today announced a new iPad mini with a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, a nano-texture display option, a thinner and lighter design, an A20 Pro chip, a new Acoustic Display audio system that eliminates speaker holes, IP67-rated water and dust resistance, a landscape front camera, Apple's N1 chip with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, and more. Altogether, Apple says this amounts to the iPad...
Apple has begun inviting selected members of the media to a product launch experience in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a post on X, Gurman described the gathering as an "all-day product launch experience" for touchscreen MacBooks, a new iPad mini, and Macs equipped with M6 chips.
Gurman previously reported that Apple would introduce the...
Thursday October 29, 2026 1:47 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the new iPad mini has an OLED display, the device does not support ProMotion, meaning the display's refresh rate is limited to 60Hz instead of 120Hz.
ProMotion support would have allowed for the iPad mini's refresh rate to automatically adjust from 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the content being displayed, but evidently Apple has kept the feature exclusive to the iPad Pro among iPad...
I think we're coming to see that tablets are a lot like PCs in regards to how often they will be upgraded by users. They had the large initial boom of sales to get them into the market, now people are just keeping what they have since it's good enough. The iPad 2 still gets the job done for most people and most businesses who purchase them in bulk are also still using iPad 2s. No reason to get a newer model.
In fact I think tablets will be upgraded even less often than PCs going forward as they are the least essential device between computers, smartphones, and tablets.
I don't think releasing an iPad-speed bump will increase marketshare a lot. The iPad Air 2 is IMHO the best update to date, but that didn't really help improve marketshare.
It's time for a "different" iPad... something more than just a blown-up iPod Touch.
I stopped using my iPad when I got my iPhone 6 Plus. My guess is that's the direction personal computing will head. Your phone will be the hub. It'll act as a mobile device when on the go, but when you get home, it'll wirelessly connect to some sort of Cinema Display.
