The sales of tablets dramatically fell in Western Europe last year as consumers were rather searching for the alternatives such as 2-in-1 detachables and convertible notebooks, says the newest study from the market research company CONTEXT. During the last quarter of 2015 the sales of tablets across the Western Europe posted a dramatic decline of 27.5% counting year-on-year, from over five million at the end of 2014 to around 3.7 million in Q4 2015, it says. The falls were particular severe in the four following markets: Germany which saw a 43% drop in tablet sales, followed by Spain, Italy and the UK which posted 31%, 20%, and 14% falls, respectively.
It is hard to see what alternatives are being chosen - the decline in PC sales through distributors also softened in 2015, but with a strong focus on stock clearance, while the unit sales went down by 0.1% year-on-year in Q4 2015 and were counterbalanced by notebook performance which showed a growth of 2.7% y/y with further continued drops in desktops by 8.7% y/y.
What is more, consumer PCs year-on-year sales went up by 2.9%, measured in unit sales, while business sales dropped by 4.5%. According to CONTEXT, the hardest hit was on Android tablets which saw a 37.4% y/y decline while iOS and Windows went down by 15.4% and 9.1%, respectively. As far as 2-in-1 detachables are concerned, sales in Western Europe grew by 31.3% year-on-year to nearly 300,000 units, with Acer holding a 29%market share along with Asus (24%) and HP (22%).
In terms of convertibles, the market experienced a huge year-on-year sales of growth 84.7%, although from a relatively small base, says CONTEXT.
The total PC sales in Q4 2015 in the UK market posted a 10% y/y growth driven by fewer currency issues than the Eurozone countries. At the same time, all other significant markets in Western Europe, except for Spain which showed signs of recovery with an 8.3% growth, posted declines with Italy going down by 3.3%, Germany by 3.5% and France by 9.2%.
The Netherlands and Switzerland posted PC growth with 2% and almost 6%, respectively, while Portugal, Belgium, Austria and Poland saw declines, says CONTEXT. “To put these figures in perspective, detachables and convertibles comprised 11% of overall notebook unit sales in distribution at the end of last year, and an even larger share (15%) in the consumer space,” comments Marie-Christine, senior analyst at CONTEXT.