Is it possible that tablets are coming to a saturation point? Er… probably not, given how popular the little handheld devices actually are but they have had their first worldwide slip, according to the IDC (International Data Corporation.

You see, tablets actually had a pretty good year in 2014, with global sales up by 4.4% (that’s just shy of 230 million tablets sold across the board last year) but that’s in spite or, not thanks to, the last quarter of 2014.

All of the majors saw a decline in tablet sales in the last part of last year, compared to their performance at the same time in 2013. Apple’s tablet shipments dropped from 26 million to 21.4 million, a fall of 17.8%. Samsung fared even worse, percentage-wise, falling from 13.5 million to 11 million shipments according to the IDC’s data. That’s a drop of 18.4%.

Asus, the other big tablet player, had shipments fall by 24.9% while poor Amazon has experienced a drop of 69.9% year-on-year but IDC not counting their newer 6-inch tab might have something to do with that.

The only company to increase shipments in Q4 2014 is Lenovo, who saw shipments rise by 300,000, an increase of just over 9%.

What does this mean for the future of tablets? Not a whole lot, yet. This is the first quarterly decline for tablets but a string of these might signal that saturation point, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for updates throughout the year. As mobile devices get more powerful, it’s possible that the tablet could fall by the wayside, replaced by the phablet, smartphone or a microchip implanted in your brain.

Source: The Next Web