Forecast for the number of tablet users up to 2019
Many people like to go big, even with devices, so it’s no shocker that the tablet market is doing so well lately.
Statista has predicted that the use of tablets will increase to over 1.4 billion users by 2018 as more of them are shipped worldwide. It has also predicted that the users will mainly come from the US and Europe.
As shown in the chart, the number of tablet users should rise from 1 billion this year to over 1.5 billion in the next 4 years leading up to 2019. The chart also seems to suggest the users grow by 300 million every 2 years.
Regarding operating systems, Android and iOS will still be the main ones running on these tablets, but with Android taking a much bigger share as it runs across devices from various tablet makers compared to iOS which is only on Apple devices.
Digital marketing research firm eMarketer also predicted that the growth would slow down in 2015, due to 3 factors:
- tablets are still a luxury in some areas
- the need for them hasn’t been clearly defined for some people
- there is stiff competition from smartphones and phablets.
These reasons are typical of emerging markets where economies are hard and people are living on less than $2 a day. Some smartphone makers are producing less expensive phones while tablets may still remain above their budget.
