Spurred by the disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic in the global economic space, Apple’s iPad sales significantly grew in 2020, as lockdown measures forced millions of people worldwide to work from home.
Introduced in 2010, the iPad was a pioneer in the tablet market, aiming to fill a gap between smartphones and laptops.
According to tablets’ sales data report by StockApps.com, the surge in demand for iPad tablets, especially in the last quarter of the year, pushed its lifetime sales above the half-a-billion benchmark.
Specifically, Apple reportedly shipped more than 53 million iPads in the year under review with its sales hitting 540 million in 2020.
StockApps.com’s data showed that in 2013, Apple generated $31.8bn in revenue from iPad sales, with more than 74 million units shipped worldwide that year, the highest annual figure so far.
In 2014, the company’s shipments dropped to 63.4 million, while sales revenue amounted to $30.1bn, However, the following years witnessed slumping trend in the company’s sales, with the number of shipments falling by almost 50% to 33.3 million in 2018.
Until the third quarter of 2018, Apple sold nearly 425 million iPads worldwide and released eight versions of the device.
According to the statistics by StockApps.com on its sales, after dropping for four years in a row, iPad shipments rose to almost 50 million in 2019, with annual sales revenues recovered to $21.1bn that year.
However, as millions of people started working and educating at home due to the COVID-19 lockdown, iPad shipments jumped to 53.2 million in 2020, the strongest sales year since 2014. Apple generated $23.5bn from tablets’ sales last year, representing 10% growth over the sales earnings in 2019.
Statistics further indicated that during the Q4 2020 only, or the company’s Q1 FY 2021, Apple’s iPad category earned $8.4bn, up from $6bn in the year-ago quarter. Between October and December last year, Apple shipped 19 million iPads to consumers worldwide, a 5.1 million increase from the previous quarter.
The IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Trackers showed that in 2020, more than 163 million tablets were shipped worldwide, and iPads made one-third of that figure. In the year, Apple had a 32.5% share in the global tablet market, compared to 34.6% in 2019.
The statistics further indicated that Samsung retained the number two position and recorded 44% shipment growth last year. In the previous year, the tech giant shipped 21.7 million tablets worldwide. This figure surged to 31.3 million amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is even as Huawei controlled 9.8% market share with 16 million shipments last year, up from 14.8 million in 2019.
Lenovo, as the fourth largest notebook vendor globally, shipped 14.1 million tablets in 2020, representing a 66% growth in a year, increasing its market share to 8.6% last year, up from 5.9% in 2019.
