Whitebox cheaper brands of tablets emerging
Display Search released Mobile PC shipment and Forecast Report. In diagram above we can see that Apple still dominates Tablet market by whopping 53.6%, but we also see quickly emerging and fast growing segment of local or non-branded manufacturers – whitebox. In Q4 of last year whitebox produced 567K units and by growth of 235% managed to sell over 1.9 million of units in the Q1 of this year. 44% of this whitebox segment is represented by China.
“Price is a significant influence on any consumer product, and tablets currently carry a healthy premium on the cost of the hardware components,” said Richard Shim, Senior Analyst for DisplaySearch. “The emergence of the whitebox tablet market is an indication that the market is reacting to that premium and trying to give consumers a lower price to drive adoption. In the short term, the tradeoff will likely result in a less than ideal user experience.”
What we find interesting here is in the left column, notably the change from the last year where the tablets volumes have actually declined from last quarter. Of course over all sales year to year are still sky high, the category was newly born! The cheap alternative to iPad and Co are a good indicator that there is a very large layer of potential buyers that are not willing to pay a premium for their devices. Also clearly visible is the netbooks position entering into 2011, our favorite little mobile computer is actually experiencing an increase in sales from last quarter – apparently the dead keep living.
This is great news for Apple: Despite the number of low-cost devices they are still the market leader in this market segment. However they went from having a monopoly on the market segment to only 54%. Its early in the year so its too soon to tell how they market share will even out, but with the aggressive influx of Chinese Whitebox manufacturers on the market and the success of the Color Nook, we can see that there is a demand for tablets that are more affordable then even Apple is offering.
One notable number is 1.6% increase of notebook production this year. Tablets are not killing notebook market after all.
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