Fuelled by Back-to-School promotions in the US, the worldwide tablet market was able grow 11.5 percent in the third quarter of 2014. According to the latest numbers from IDC, Samsung has retailed its position as the second largest tablet PC vendor in the world with a market share of 18.3 percent, just behind Apple. When compared to last year, Samsung’s tablet market share declined, but it was still able to grow at 5.6 percent. From over 58.3 million tablet devices sold in Q3 2014, Samsung was able to sell 9.9 million of those units. According to the report, Samsung has slowly begun to focus on the North American, the Middle East Asia, and the African market for tablets, where low-cost Asian competitors haven’t been able to gain a foothold as of now.

Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC Research Director for Tablets said, “Not only is the US market one of the largest for tablets, but third quarter results also indicate that this is where the growth is. We saw Verizon continuing to sell connected tablets at a fast pace, a strategy that we believe other carriers will replicate in following quarters. We also saw RCA enter the top 5, impacting the entire US market and worldwide ranking with one large deal linked to back-to-school and channel fill ahead of Black Friday. Those two elements resulted in the US tablet market growing at 18.5% year-over-year compared to the worldwide market growing at 11.5% annually.“

Vendor 3Q14 Unit Shipments 3Q14 Market Share 3Q13 Unit Shipments 3Q13 Market Share Year-over-Year Growth 1. Apple 12.3 22.8% 14.1 29.2% -12.8% 2. Samsung 9.9 18.3% 9.3 19.3% 5.6% 3. ASUS 3.5 6.5% 3.6 7.4% -0.9% 4. Lenovo 3.0 5.7% 2.3 4.8% 30.6% 5. RCA 2.6 4.9% 0.9 1.8% 194.0% Others 22.5 41.8% 18.1 37.4% 24.4% Total 53.8 100.0% 48.3 100.0% 11.5%

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