Apple iPad suffers tablet marketshare slump as Samsung and Asus surge

Apple’s iPad has suffered a year-on-year worldwide marketshare decline during the third quarter despite volume growth, as competitors Samsung and Asus surged in marketshare.

New figures from IDC reveal that third quarter tablet sales grew by 49.5% year-on-year, from 18.6 million in 2011 to 27.8 million in 2012.

While Apple recorded a 26.1% year-on-year growth in iPad shipments, from 11.1 million units to 14 million units in 2012, its share of the market slumped from 59.7% to 50.4%.

The biggest beneficiary of Apple’s marketshare slump was Samsung, which witnessed 325% year-on-year growth in its third quarter unit shipments, from 1.2 million units in 2011 to 5.1 million units in 2012.

Kindle Fire-maker Amazon claimed third spot with 2.5 million units and 9% marketshare. Because IDC does not appear to count eBook readers as tablet devices, unlike other tablet marketshare surveys, IDC classes Amazon as a new entrant into the market.

The other strong performer in terms of marketshare growth was Asus, a remarkable growth in shipment volumes of 242.9%, from just 700,000 units and 3.8% in the third quarter of 2011 to 2.4 million units and 8.6% marketshare in 2012. Note that Asus’ figure includes shipments of the Google Nexus 7 as well as its own PadFone and Transformer hybrid tablet devices.

Lenovo rounded out the top five manufacturers with 400,000 units and 1.4% marketshare, predominantly based on shipments of low-cost devices within China.

Aside from Apple, the other big losses came from tablet makers outside the top five, including HP, Dell and Research in Motion. The broad “others” category shrank by 38.9%from 5.4 million units and 28.9% marketshare in the third quarter of 2011 to 3.3 million units and 12.2% marketshare in 2012.