Are Smartphone and Tablet Sales Grinding to a Halt?

Yeah, Apple just came off of their first quarter with year-over-year revenue decline in more than a decade. But they aren’t the only ones struggling to sell product. Two new reports released this week showed that both the smartphone and tablet markets as a whole contracted during Quarter 1 of 2016, with tablet sales falling to their lowest level in nearly four years.

Let’s dive into them

Starting with the worse news, market intelligence firm Strategy Analytics reported that 46.5 million tablets were shipped between January 1 and March 31, the lowest total since the third quarter of 2012, and a 10 percent decline in year-over-year growth. Out of the top six global tablet vendors (by market share) only one experienced year-over-year growth in total shipments—Huawei, which saw its sales jump 66 percent and market share nearly double from 2.4 to 4.5 percent. As for the biggest losers, every other company in the top six saw their tablet shipments decline by double digits: Samsung (-26 percent), Apple (-19 percent), Asus (-17 percent), Lenovo (-15 percent), and White Box (-10 percent).