China’s tablet market predicted to grow 4% in 2025 and 2026

The Canalys research group predicts that that China’s PC (excluding tablets) market will rebound to 3% growth in 2024 and 10% growth in 2025, primarily fueled by refresh demand from the commercial sector. 

However, the tablet market is expected to grow by 4% in both 2024 and 2025, benefiting from increasing penetration as digitalization deepens. That should be good news for the iPad.

The PC (excluding tablets) market in Mainland China ended 2023 with a 9% year-on-year decline in quarter four (Q4), with 11.3 million units shipped. Desktops experienced a 13% drop to 3.3 million units, while notebook shipments decreased by 7% year on year to 8.1 million units. This led to overall shipments of 41.2 million units in 2023, down 17% from 2022.  However, Apple doesn’t rank in the top five PC makers in China; those are Lenovo, HP, Huawei, Dell, and Asus.

HoweverChina’s tablet market saw a decline of 3% in Q4 2023 to reach 8.4 million units, with full-year 2023 shipments totaling 28.3 million in a year with increased competition as new entrants ramped up their focus on the category, according to Canalys.

Apple is the number one tablet company in China. It sold approximately 9 million iPads in 2023 for 32% market share. That compares to sales of 10 million and 37% market share in 2022. iPad sales dropped 10% year-over-year. 

Part of the problem is that Apple released no major tablet updates last year. The tech giant is expected to unveil new iPad Pros and iPad Airs next months, which could jumpstart sales globally.