Samsung makes the world's best Android tablets, ranging from the affordable Galaxy Tab A 8.0 to the ultra-high-end Galaxy Tab S7+. Since the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the company saw impressive growth in tablet sales worldwide, riding the remote learning wave. The South Korean tech giant maintained its second spot in the global tablet market during Q1 2021.
Market research firm IDC's (International Data Corporation) latest report claims that Samsung managed to ship 8 million tablets in Q1 2021. This is an impressive 60.8% year-over-year growth compared to Q1 2020, when it shipped 5 million tablets. Samsung's Q1 2021 tablet market share was 20%, and it maintained its second rank. Apple was the world's biggest tablet maker with shipments of around 12.7 million units, which translates to a 31.7% market share. The iPad maker saw a 64.3% year-over-year growth compared to 7.7 million shipments in Q1 2020.
Lenovo ranked third with a 9.4% share of the market and shipments hanging around the 3.8-million mark. However, compared to its Q1 2020 numbers, it achieved a whopping 138.1% year-over-year growth. Similar is the case with Amazon, which shipped 3.5 million Fire tablets and ranked fourth, achieving a staggering 143% year-over-year growth. On the other hand, Huawei slipped from third to the fifth position as its market share dwindled to just 6.8%.
Samsung's performance was quite impressive considering that it didn't launch any new tablets in Q1 2021. Its latest tablets—Galaxy Tab S7 and the Galaxy Tab A7—were launched in Q3 2020. The company is expected to unveil the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite and the Galaxy Tab S7 Lite sometime in June 2021. The successor to the Galaxy Tab S7 lineup could launch in Q3 2021 to compete with the recently launched iPad Pro (2021) from Apple.
