You can slide a wafer-thin device between Apple and Microsoft's New Zealand slate market share.
IDC New Zealand reports Apple shipped less than 1000 more detachable or slate devices than Microsoft in 2016.
The total market for the year was 80,000 units. Apple had a 32 percent market share, which is around 25,600 units.
Microsoft was at 31 percent, a shade under 25,000 units.
Detachable is a curious market to measure. IDC defines it:
"A slate tablet is a portable, battery-powered computing device with a screen size 7-inches to 16-inches.
In addition to the attributes of a slate tablet, a detachable tablet is designed to function as a stand-alone slate
tablet as well as a clamshell device through the addition of a detachable keyboard designed specifically for the
device."
IDC New Zealand mobile device market analyst Chayse Gorton says this includes Apple's 12.9-inch and 9.7-inch iPad Pros.
Yet both sell without detachable keyboards and not every buyer uses them with one1.
The category includes Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Book, HP Envy and others.
It is distinct from traditional laptops. The distinction between slates and tablets like non-Pro iPads is blurry.
Either way, Apple topped the market in 2016. Microsoft is second. It had been number one for the years 2013, 2014 and
2015. Microsoft's shipments climbed three percent from 2015 to 2016.
It was a bonza year for detachable sales. Shipments2 increased from 55,000 in 2015 to 80,000 — a year-on-year increase of 45 percent.
The runners-up are, in order: HP on nine percent; Samsung on seven percent and Acer also with seven percent. Other
brands were less than 15%.
Gorton says Microsoft faces competition from a range of models running Windows. Its share of the Windows detachable
market fell from 58 percent in 2015 to 50 percent in 2016.
"Competing windows detachables often have similar specifications to Microsoft detachables, but are frequently sold at a
lower price. Given New Zealand is a price conscious nation, a lower price, even by small a margin can be enough to
entice a consumer to purchase from a competing vendor", he says.
Gorton says Microsoft sharpened its premium market position introducing high-end models and halting low-end models. It
introduced the Surface Book early in the year and dropped the Surface 3 from its line-up.
IDC expects detachable shipments to grow between 25 and 30 percent in 2017. From the market will start to flatten off.
You could argue the iPad Pro and Windows devices are not direct head-to-head rivals. It's possible there are buyers who
would weigh up an iPad Pro against these Windows devices. Yet for the most part the two groups inhabit parallel
universes.
Shipments is a normal term for this kind of survey. Most of the time it means how many devices vendors sent from warehouses to
retailers. It gets tricky with detachable because Apple and Microsoft sell direct.
Apple, Microsoft dominate NZ slate sales was first posted at billbennett.co.nz.