Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Samsung and Asus tablet sales shrank before Christmas, but Lenovo bucks the trend

Worldwide sales of tablets shrank during the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the same figures a year earlier, according to IDC, with Lenovo being the sole major vendor to buck the global trend.

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, the global tablet market shrank by 3.2% from 78.6 million units during the fourth quarter of 2013 to 76.1 million for the same quarter in 2014. The figures include both tablets and convertible laptops, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

Market leader Apple, which claims 28.1% of the market, saw shipments of its iPad plunge 17.8% to 21.4 million units, down from 26 million a year earlier. The news was no better at rival Samsung, where sales of its Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note 10 devices fell 18.4% to 11 million units.

The most alarming fall came for Kindle maker Amazon, which saw its sales collapse by 69.9% to just 1.7 million units, down from 5.8 million a year earlier. There was also an alarming 24.9% fall in sales for MemoPad, FonePad and Transformer Book maker Asus, which saw its shipments drop to just 3 million units.

The only company bucking the trend was Lenovo, which saw a modest 9.1% increase in its shipments to 3.7 million units, off the back of a well-received series of updates to its Yoga and ThinkPad tablets in the lead-up to Christmas. Late last year, Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing said he intends to return the company’s Motorola brand to the tablet market.

The figures also show tablet sales for the full year grew by just 4.4% to 229.6 million units. Year-on-year declines were reported by Apple (-14.6%), Asus (-5.5%) and Amazon (66.4%), with strong growth for Lenovo (up 66.4%) and slight growth for Samsung (up 1.1%).