After Christmas every year, public libraries commonly have a lot of patrons bring their new gadgets to the library to ask for help in connecting to the Internet, loading ebooks, or doing any number of other things, thinking that the librarians will know more about the new devices than they do. More and more often, that device is a tablet computer, and if early holiday sales are any indication, that will be especially true this year, as tablets are grabbing a huge portion of the market. Those sales numbers are important for libraries to notice, because they tell us what types of devices people will be using to access online library services. So how well does your library website work on a tablet computer?
- Samsung tablet sales goes past 10 million for the first time in Q3, 2013 (States Chronicle/Jason Setrakian) “Cumulative tablet sales figures for Samsung up to the third quarter have been reported to be 28 million units. In 2012, the total sales of tablet PC by Samsung had been 16.6 million units. Analysts believe the company can end up selling twice the number of tablet devices it has sold last year if it is able to maintain the sales rate it has achieved till the third quarter.”
- Walmart reports hot Black Friday tablet sales led by iPad mini (BGR/Chris Smith) “Walmart’s top sellers include big screen TVs and laptops, with the retailer singling out certain hot products such as the iPad mini, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and the Call of Duty: Ghosts game. Online, hand-held video games and SLR digital cameras were among the most popular items. Interestingly, Walmart said it sold over 1.4 million tablets during its Black Friday sale led by the iPad mini.”
- Canalys: Half of all PCs shipped in 2014 will be tablets; Android 65%, Apple 30% (TechCrunch/Ingrid Lunden) “Leading the charge will be tablets built on Android – which collectively will account for 65% of all tablets shipped (185 million units) with Samsung at the helm. Apple, with its growing line of iPad devices, will remain the single-biggest tablet brand, taking 30% of the market – and, significantly, the most profitable.”
- Samsung looking to eclipse Apple and ship 100 million tablets in 2014 (GSMArena/Ian) “…in Q3 2013…Samsung was able to ship almost 10 million units, an increase of 123% over the same period in 2012. For the same time period, Apple was able to increase its year-over-year growth by only 0.6%, and saw its market share fall from just over 40% in 3Q12 to 29.6% in 3Q13. According to ETNews out of Korea, Samsung is in talks with several Korean panel makers to ensure it will have enough supply as it anticipates to eclipse its 2013 figures by more than two-fold.”
Surface fact:
Tech market consulting company Canalys predicts that the Microsoft Surface tablet will double its market share from 2012 to 2014, but still have only 5% of all tablet sales.
