W. European tablet shipments are down by -10.1% Y-o-Y to reach 6.3 million units, IDC reports, with Apple and Huawei as the only vendors in the top 5 to see some measure of growth during the quarter.
The analyst attributes such declines to market saturation, lengthening life cycles and a lack of innovation, at least in a consumer segment with shipments dropping by -6.1% Y-o-Y. The commercial segment sees a "degree of resilience" through certain niche use-case deployments. Detachables/hybrid devices also see a challenging Q2 2018, with shipments falling by -23.3% Y-o-Y. This is due to premium Apple and Microsoft devices dominating the market, leading price-constrained customers to consider cheaper alternatives such as lower-end convertibles or even traditional PCs.
"Apple repeated last year's successful strategy of positioning the iPad at a more attractive price point to address the erosion of consumer demand for tablets," IDC remarks. "This triggered a wave of renewals of old iPads and some Android tablets which helped Apple to perform above the market average and regain the leading position in W. Europe."
Another W. European tablet winner is Huawei-- the Chinese company has found a sweet spot in the lower mid-range price bands, and is taking over market share from other Android-based device makers. As a result, Huawei stands 3rd in the vendor top 5 (after Apple and Samsung) with 110.3% Y-o-Y shipment growth.
As mentioned earlier, Apple leads the W. European Q2 2018 tablet market, with the launch of the newer, attractively priced iPad leading to 30.7% share and 2% Y-o-Y growth. Samsung follows with 22.3% share and shipment declines of -14.2% Y-o-Y, the result of sluggish premium Android device performance as well as inventory management in preparation of the Galaxy Tab S4 launch.
Lenovo stands 4th with 7.6% market share and a "heavy" -23.4% Y-o-Y decline. The company is all too focused on consumer and lower-priced models and as such is susceptible to competition from Huawei and the cheaper iPad. In 5th place is Amazon, with 4.4% share and -8.6% Y-o-Y decline, predictably weaker Q2 2018 performance as consumers delay purchases until early July for Prime Day.
