Samsung’s H2 new tablet launch to close gap on market leader iPad

Samsung Electronics Co., the second-largest player in the global tablet market, is aiming to narrow the gap with industry leader Apple Inc. with its Galaxy Tab S9 series to be launched in the second half of this year.

The South Korean tech giant’s latest tablet is the Galaxy Tab S8 series, which was released in February 2022 around the same time as the Galaxy S22 smartphone series. Samsung earned about 3 trillion won ($2.3 billion) in revenue from the tablet business during the first quarter of this year, with 200 billion-300 billion won in operating profit, according to industry sources.

“The operating profit of the tablet business in the quarter rose from a year ago, thanks to increased sales in our premium digital devices,” said a Samsung official.

The Galaxy Tab S9 series is forecast to be released in the fourth week of July, when Samsung is said to be launching the new foldable Galaxy Z5 series of smartphones. 

The new tablet is widely expected to be equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 application processor (AP), which has been used in the Galaxy S23. The AP, which serves as the brain of the Galaxy S23, is said to have a 34% increase in central processing unit (CPU) performance compared to its predecessor.

Global Tablet Market Share
	2021	2022	Q1 2023
Apple	34.3%	38.0%	35.2%
Samsung Electronics	18.2%	18.6%	23.1%
Huawei Technologies	5.8%	5.6%	6.6%
Lenovo Group	10.5%	7.1%	6.2%
Amazon.com	9.6%	9.8%	4.6%
Others	21.6%	34.0%	24.4%
(Source: International Data Corporation)

Global tablet shipments during the first quarter of this year totaled 30.7 million units, down 19.1% on-year, according to market research firm International Data Corporation. Apple, the top player, accounted for 35.2% with 10.8 million units during the period. The iPad maker’s market share rose to 38% last year from 34.3% in 2021.

Samsung logged 23.1% in the January-March period with 7.1 million units of Galaxy Tabs. Its market share has increased from 18.2% in 2021 and 18.6% last year, closing the gap with its top rival. Among the smaller players was Huawei Technologies Co. with 6.6%, Lenovo Group Ltd. with 6.2% and Amazon.com Inc. with 4.6%.

Industry insiders expect Apple will consolidate its No. 1 position by launching a new iPad equipped with organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) next year.

Some market speculators forecast the two top players will release their respective foldable tablets in the same year. Samsung has nothing yet to confirm about foldable tablets, an official of the company told The Korea Economic Daily.

Industry watchers say the two firms’ combined market share, 58.3% as of the first quarter of this year, is highly likely to exceed 60% with their new products.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.