Apple’s new iPads lead tablet sales boom during pandemic

Apple has announced its new iPad Pro equipped with the M1. It’s more powerful than its immediate predecessor and costs between $ 799 and $ 1,099, with additional storage options available. But who will buy such a device in 2021 and beyond? It turns out that the tablet industry is booming right now.
After impressive growth in the first half of the last decade, the tablet sales fell drastically since. Between customers who keep their tablets longer than their phones and increasingly larger phone screens, demand for tablets peaked around 2014.
But collected data by IDC suggests that sales increased in 2020 as people worked and learned from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, after 230.1 million units shipped in 2014, that number fell to just 144.5 million. Then 164.1 million units sold in 2020, paving the way for Apple’s new iPad Pro.
And make no mistake: Apple dominates the tablet market, so increasing tablet sales means increasing iPad sales. The release of the iPad and iPad Air 2020 has helped Apple ship 19 million tablets in the last three months of the year, allowing Cupertino to control 36.5% of the market.
In total, Apple shipped 53.2 million iPads in 2020, exceeding the 47.3 million units sold by Apple’s two biggest competitors combined. While Samsung, Huawei, Amazon and Lenovo all saw their numbers jump last year, it’s clear that Apple dominates the tablet market and controls its future.