A lot of business took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Samsung has a reason to be happy. Thanks to social distancing norms around the world and a sharp rise in demand for work-from-home and remote learning tools, Samsung saw increased profits in Q3 and Q4 2020. The South Korean tech giant shipped not only memory and storage chips for PCs, laptops, and servers, but also millions of tablets during the pandemic.
Samsung managed to sell close to 10 million (9.9 million to be exact) Galaxy Tab devices globally during Q4 2020, coming in as the second-biggest tablet brand in the world. The company's tablet market share was 19% during the quarter, and that's a 40% growth compared to Q4 2019. Apple was the biggest tablet vendor during the same quarter, with a market share of 36% and shipments of 19.2 million iPads. Amazon shipped 6.5 million Fire tablets and acquired a 12% share of the market. Lenovo and Huawei shipped 5.6 million and 3.5 million tablets, respectively.
Over the course of the complete year, Samsung shipped 31 million tablets in 2020. The company's market share was 19%, a healthy 40% improvement compared to 2019. Apple shipped 58.8 million iPads last year, grabbing a market share of 37%. Huawei, Amazon, and Lenovo's shipments stood at 16.3 million, 15.9 million, and 14.2 million, respectively, during 2020. From the looks of it, all brands selling tablets benefitted from the pandemic due to the unusually high demand for devices that help in remote learning.
Samsung launched various tablets last year, including high-end ones like the Galaxy Tab S7 and the Galaxy Tab S7+, and affordable ones like the Galaxy Tab A7 (2020). The South Korean firm is the only brand that can rival Apple in the tablet segment and puts in real effort in making the Android experience better for tablets with its One UI software.
