Tomas Chlebek The global tablet market has been in steady decline for some time. In the last calendar quarter of 2015, they were sold ten percent less than in the same part of 2014. Apple sent almost a quarter fewer devices into circulation than a year ago, and a significant part of this amount was the new iPad Pro.
Increasing Apple's revenue for a type of product essentially created by it was certainly one of the main purposes launching a large and powerful tablet last November. iPad Pro is estimated IDC it sold around two million by the end of the year, significantly more than its biggest competitor, the Microsoft Surface. Of these, 1,6 million were sold, with the majority surprisingly being the more expensive Surface Pro, but the Surface 3 is also included in the numbers.
Based on your data IDC called the launch of the iPad Pro very successful, also due to the fact that the largest iPad was not even on sale for three months. At the same time, the published numbers show that users prioritize performance over affordability for larger tablets, which is one of the aspects that differentiates them from "mid-range" tablets like the iPad Air (IDC does not, for example, have the iPad Air and iPad Pro in the same category, large puts tablets with a removable keyboard into a new category detachable).
Jitesh Ubrani, an analyst at IDC, said that in general, this new higher class of tablets has expanded the profit opportunities for both Apple and Microsoft. Another sign of this is the fact that Microsoft sold almost a third more Surface tablets than the year before. So the iPad Pro didn't necessarily disrupt their rise in popularity, but it did attract more new customers. On the other hand, similar Android devices do not yet appear, or do not have much success.
Regarding total sales of tablets of all types, according to IDC, Apple sold the most (24,5% of the market), followed by Samsung (13,7% of the market) and somewhat surprisingly Amazon (7,9% of the market). A big influence on Amazon's success was probably the introduction of the very cheap Amazon Fire.
