According to a new International Data Corporation (IDC) Western Europe Quarterly Tablet Tracker forecast, d
Demand for detachable tablets will drive the overall European PC and tablet device market over the coming years.
By 2018, detachables and slate tablets will account for 51% of total shipments (up from 45% in 2015), as demand for traditional PCs continues to slowly decline due to market maturity and migration to more mobile form factors.
By 2020, detachable tablets are expected to represent more than 20% of all client computing devices, from only 5% in 2015, according to a new International Data corporation (IDC) Western Europe Quarterly Tablet Tracker forecast.
Detachable devices will outperform slates throughout the period, with a predicted CAGR of 30% over the next five years. The growth in detachables will be boosted by increasing competition as more players try to take advantage of the opportunity generated by the current uptake of detachable tablets among consumers and professionals.
“Over the last few quarters, a large number of new ODM detachable designs have been announced, most of which run Windows 10 and based on a new generation of more powerful processors,” says Marta Fiorentini, research manager at IDC EMEA Personal Computing. “These two key features will allow vendors to target consumers, who still prefer a keyboard for basic productivity or content creation tasks and will now be able to benefit from an improved mobile experience, as well as professional users looking for powerful machines to replace their notebooks.
“We are already seeing adoption gaining traction among more senior and mobile workforce ranks in some European companies and we expect this trend to accelerate as companies upgrade to Windows 10.”
The new wave of detachables will also have an impact on market dynamics as the product category becomes increasingly popular with consumers. Detachables will drive growth in the overall tablet category, while slates are expected to contract over the period.
“The outlook for slates is less encouraging as most Western European countries show signs of growing saturation,” says Daniel Goncalves, research analyst at IDC EMEA Personal Computing. “This has been reflected in a gradual erosion of demand over the last couple of years and this is not expected to reverse.
“The market for consumer slates has become increasingly dependent on renewals, but a preference for large smartphones and the emergence of new consumer categories such as wearables are significantly extending the life cycle of slate tablets.”
In a mature market like Western Europe, PCs are mainly driven by replacements, and as a result the notebook and desktop markets are expected to be soft after a strong wave of renewals in 2014 followed by a significant contraction in shipments in 2015. N
otebooks are expected to stabilise from 2018, while desktops are likely to be boosted by renewals in 2018, four years after the end of the Windows XP support, and in 2020 with the announced end of Windows 7 support.
The adoption of Windows 10 is not expected to lead to major hardware refreshes, but will reinforce mobility, and this in turn will boost adoption of detachables, convertibles, and ultraslim models. Within the PC category, IDC expects all-in-ones, convertibles, and ultraslim notebooks to outperform the market and to account for almost half (47,1%) of all PC shipments by 2020, up from only 29,5% in 2015.
